Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SMART PlantOne (A low-cost IoT - solution for predictive maintenance of small electric motors towards the Factory of the Future)
Période du rapport: 2017-12-01 au 2018-05-31
An additional key feature is the automation of the data processing that will reduce the need for experts in data reading and interpretation; thus, smaller firms will be able to adopt predictive maintenance without the need to hire dedicated personnel, whose cost would put pressure on their profit margins.
The commercial viability has been focused on the estimation of the market potential in Europe and went deeper interviewing clients with the aim to investigate their needs and expectations. A competitor analysis investigated which firms are proposing similar products to the market and how these products differ from SMART PlantOne specifications. After the analysis of customers’ needs and competitor strategies we reach the following two conclusions: (i) the technical road-map has been revised, toward the analysis of measurements of different nature; (ii) a possible business model has been chosen among three different business models analysed. The financial projections show that the NGS can reach an established position and profitability in 5 years from the product launch.
However, NGS management team recognises the importance of an appropriate commercial strategy and therefore part of the activity has been the analysis of communication strategies applied by competitors. This led to the identification of the best channels to use and to the definition of the best communication contents to produce.
An IP strategy analysis has been conducted, investigating the best means to protect the intellectual property embedded into SMART PlantOne and the distribution of patent applications in the IoT domain. The results of this steps recommended trade secret as the best way to protect IP.
From the socio-economic perspective, a large-scale commercialization of this technology would have as a consequence an increased productivity and reduced downtime for many firms and, consequently, benefits from savings for the whole society.
The project is concluded and NGS is now heading towards a phase 2 application.