MOTIVATION
Servitization trend been applied already both to consumer goods and to capital goods as companies are more and more willing to sell (and buy) manufacturing capacity instead of new equipment making the manufacturing as a service (MaaS) paradigm arise.
Yet this transformation doesn’t consider yet systemic effects, such as capacity underuse and suboptimal value networks, thus still retaining the European manufacturing system from unleashing its full potential. Also opportunities for reuse of wastes or by-products within the industrial ecosystem difficultly emerge thus limiting their enforcement.
To fully achieve the MaaS paradigm, an aggregation and information sharing point is required to give visibility to the manufacturing capacity that any company may want to make available at any location and in any particular field. In parallel, the acquisition and formalisation of the production demand is also needed to set up the counterpart for the matching and systemic optimisation. Endowing this matching marketplace with reputation mechanisms capable to raise an environment of mutually trusting partners is a key step for abating barriers to markets and to open the doors to innovative ideas who may never reach them otherwise.
The approach brought forth by the MANU-SQUARE project is key to ensure that the generation process of innovative product-services is supported by a fast and effective match of articulated demand and available supply. In fact, by exploiting the platform-enabled marketplace, technology savvy brokers have the proper visibility over system capacity and can easily arrange scope-driven value networks leveraging on the underlying aware and reactive industrial ecosystem with mutual benefits to both providers and users of manufacturing services. Sharing platforms in the manufacturing domain are becoming more and more relevant with new platforms appearing on the market by the day even though a battle for dominant position has not been settled yet.
OBJECTIVES
Objective 1 – To make European unused manufacturing capacity emerge towards its reintegration in the loop and the creation of local efficient value networks
Objective 2 – To support innovative SMEs and start-ups in finding the optimal suppliers to transform their business ideas into new product-services
Objective 3 – To seamlessly involve actors all along the entire value network including consumers for cross-fertilisation of product-service solutions and underlying technologies
Objective 4 – To coordinate the whole MANU-SQUARE ecosystem towards a better use of resources and a more sustainable European manufacturing
RESULTS ACHIEVED
A minimum viable platform (MVP) has been developed and made available to both internal and external early users for validation and it is supported by innovative platform components (e.g. matchmaking tool, reputation mechanism, blockchain-based constructs for promoting trust in supply chains, …) and by a credible business model and business plan.The enabling technologies developed in the first part of the project have been integrated into the MVP and have been continuously fine-tuned based on the feedback collected through the demonstration pilots in the silk and cosmetics sector and in the manufacturing technologies sector. An extensive dissemination plan including webinars, bilateral meetings, links with multipliers and interaction with other projects allowed to create a community of early adopters paving the way for the commercial exploitation of the platform after the end of the project.
