Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Change2Twin (Create and Harvest Offerings to support Manufacturing SMEs to become Digital Twin Champions)
Reporting period: 2022-12-01 to 2024-11-30
Change2Twin (C2T) is an H2020 I4MS project which has helped manufacturing SMEs in their digitalization efforts to deploy digital twins. Digital twins are one of the big game-changers in manufacturing and allow companies to significantly increase their global competitiveness. A digital twin is a digital replica of an artefact, process or service that is so accurate that it can be used as a basis for taking decisions. The digital replica is often connected with the physical world by streams of data. Therefore, C2T has offered manufacturing SMEs a tailor-made solution reaching from analysis of their potential, Individual Mentoring Plan to ready-to-use recipe for digital twin deployment. Digital Innovation Hubs, and from the end of 2022 also European Digital Innovation Hubs, have been important partners in this process and facilitate the uptake of the latest digital twin technologies across the European Union.
Objective
The main ambition of Change2Twin project has been to ensure that 100% of manufacturing companies in Europe have access to 100% of technologies needed to deploy a digital twin. This ambition continued by the post project Change2Twin community that is being established at the start of 2025.
C2T is adopting the best practices developed so far in I4MS:
• Helping manufacturing SMEs in their digitalization efforts.
• Focusing on local support provided by DIHs.
• Keeping cascade grants as accessible as possible.
Specifically, we have focused on three sub-objectives:
• Developing and providing a truly end-to-end service to the manufacturing SMEs where the end user receives from its local, trusted party (DIH/EDIH) a thorough analysis of the digitalization potential and a cross-border, ready-to-use recipe for implementation involving both components' providers and an integrator.
• Providing an architecture-agnostic technology marketplace with dedicated knowledge models supporting the DIH preparing the recipe for a complete solution in selecting the best components and most suitable providers for the SME.
• Finding the minimal interoperable model facilitating modularity, composability and interchangeability of components used, regardless of the individual architectures or frameworks.
C2T will/has delivered:
• 4 Pilots proving the concept and 2 Open Calls for application experiments with a selection and support programme.
• A new benchmarked service model facilitating DIHs/EDIHs in providing support to manufacturing companies.
• A Pan-European marketplace populated with the state-of-the-art service providers that create coverage for end-to-end digital twinning solutions.
Objective
The main ambition of Change2Twin project has been to ensure that 100% of manufacturing companies in Europe have access to 100% of technologies needed to deploy a digital twin. This ambition continued by the post project Change2Twin community that is being established at the start of 2025.
C2T is adopting the best practices developed so far in I4MS:
• Helping manufacturing SMEs in their digitalization efforts.
• Focusing on local support provided by DIHs.
• Keeping cascade grants as accessible as possible.
Specifically, we have focused on three sub-objectives:
• Developing and providing a truly end-to-end service to the manufacturing SMEs where the end user receives from its local, trusted party (DIH/EDIH) a thorough analysis of the digitalization potential and a cross-border, ready-to-use recipe for implementation involving both components' providers and an integrator.
• Providing an architecture-agnostic technology marketplace with dedicated knowledge models supporting the DIH preparing the recipe for a complete solution in selecting the best components and most suitable providers for the SME.
• Finding the minimal interoperable model facilitating modularity, composability and interchangeability of components used, regardless of the individual architectures or frameworks.
C2T will/has delivered:
• 4 Pilots proving the concept and 2 Open Calls for application experiments with a selection and support programme.
• A new benchmarked service model facilitating DIHs/EDIHs in providing support to manufacturing companies.
• A Pan-European marketplace populated with the state-of-the-art service providers that create coverage for end-to-end digital twinning solutions.
Related to Enabling technologies for digital twins results are:
• Compilation of the standards that are relevant to the digital twin, active attendance at standardization events.
• Contribution to the EUOS report "Landscape of Digital Twin Standards”.
• Position paper "Digital Twin Enabling Technology Catalogue" published through the website.
• Presentations on “Barriers to Digital Twin adoption and enabling technologies” at Change2Twin Certification Workshop.
• Analysis of the maturity of the enabling technologies on the marketplace.
• Continued development on the taxonomy for digital twins.
The most significant results related to the Marketplace are:
• Advancing the Marketplace and addressing different users' requirements.
• CloudBroker platform deployed.
• Facilitating easy to navigate Marketplace through the website for different kind of users.
• Crawler prototype was provided which allows import offerings from external marketplaces.
• Technical solutions for deployable services were implemented.
Monitoring & follow-up of Assessment and Deployment Experiments:
• 33 Assessment Experiments were funded and successfully completed. 85 applications.
• 26 Deployment Experiments funded, and 25 complete, one experiment stopped after inception phase as the beneficiary was acquired by a large company. 141 applications.
• Successful follow up by mentors of experiments.
• Checking and approving the deliverables of experiments.
• Lessons learned from Experiments
• YouTub videos testimonials and brochures presenting experiments
• LinkedIn channel with 1200+ members
The most significant results for sustainability, communication, and dissemination:
• Marketplace promotion, towards technology providers and EDIHs/DIHs.
• Change2Twin Network of 54 certified DIHs.
• Services dedicated to the DIH Network.
• Collaborations with other EU projects and networks.
• Awareness raising campaign on LinkedIn.
• Cooperation with three Change2Twin Ambassadors.
• Change2Twin YouTube channel populated with critical mass of shareable quality content.
• C2T website moved to clesgo’s Agora platform to exploit synergies with other projects and marketplaces and ensure sustainability of network and community.
• Compilation of the standards that are relevant to the digital twin, active attendance at standardization events.
• Contribution to the EUOS report "Landscape of Digital Twin Standards”.
• Position paper "Digital Twin Enabling Technology Catalogue" published through the website.
• Presentations on “Barriers to Digital Twin adoption and enabling technologies” at Change2Twin Certification Workshop.
• Analysis of the maturity of the enabling technologies on the marketplace.
• Continued development on the taxonomy for digital twins.
The most significant results related to the Marketplace are:
• Advancing the Marketplace and addressing different users' requirements.
• CloudBroker platform deployed.
• Facilitating easy to navigate Marketplace through the website for different kind of users.
• Crawler prototype was provided which allows import offerings from external marketplaces.
• Technical solutions for deployable services were implemented.
Monitoring & follow-up of Assessment and Deployment Experiments:
• 33 Assessment Experiments were funded and successfully completed. 85 applications.
• 26 Deployment Experiments funded, and 25 complete, one experiment stopped after inception phase as the beneficiary was acquired by a large company. 141 applications.
• Successful follow up by mentors of experiments.
• Checking and approving the deliverables of experiments.
• Lessons learned from Experiments
• YouTub videos testimonials and brochures presenting experiments
• LinkedIn channel with 1200+ members
The most significant results for sustainability, communication, and dissemination:
• Marketplace promotion, towards technology providers and EDIHs/DIHs.
• Change2Twin Network of 54 certified DIHs.
• Services dedicated to the DIH Network.
• Collaborations with other EU projects and networks.
• Awareness raising campaign on LinkedIn.
• Cooperation with three Change2Twin Ambassadors.
• Change2Twin YouTube channel populated with critical mass of shareable quality content.
• C2T website moved to clesgo’s Agora platform to exploit synergies with other projects and marketplaces and ensure sustainability of network and community.
The approach for activating DIHs/EDIHs was different in Change2Twin compared to earlier I4MS projects. A total of 54 DIHs participated in the Certification Workshops (KPI: 25) that allows them to offer services for developing digital twin recipes for SMEs that could apply for the 10K€ assessment vouchers call. The approach seems to be very efficient for activating DIHs. 225 stakeholders have been mapped (KPI 200), registered users in the C2T Community are 812 (KPI 250), the number of webinars 16 (KPI 8) and training 40 (KPI 34). Followers on social media 1 232 (KPI 2000). There has also been a much higher number of dissemination activities than planned. We received and evaluated 85 (59+26) applications in the two Assessment Voucher Open calls (KPI 245) and 142 (61+81) proposals received and evaluated for the Deployment Voucher Open calls (KPI 105).
It should be noted that the DTA support programs for EDIHs are very close to the support program Change2Twin launched to DIHs.
With respect to technical innovations beyond state-of-the-art, there is interesting work in the now completed WP3 Pilot Experiments. One of the novel approaches developed in C2T is to create digital twins of the additive manufacturing process based on voxel models giving a unique approach to visualizing information about potential defects and deviations. The ideas behind this work are being brought forward in a new EIC funded Pathfinder Challenge project SCENE-B. Other developments in the pilot experiments include the use of photogrammetry for test data correlation on manufactured prosthetics, modelling of pallet displacement under transport using finite element modelling (FEM) and enhancing process traceability capabilities using RFID technology.
The direct technology impact of Change2Twin is composed of three components: 1. The enabling technology marketplace on clesgo’s Agora platform; 2. The impact of pilot experiment; 3. The impact of assessment and deployment experiments funded through FSTP during Change2Twin. Equally important is the long-term impact of the post-project Change2Twin community. This is in the process of being set up and will live on clesgo’s Agora platform. This community is targeting DIHs/EDIHs addressing digital twins for manufacturing. The community has a special focus on supporting cross-region cooperation between DIHs/EDIHs and facilitating cross-regional access to competence centres and setting up cross-regional cooperation
It should be noted that the DTA support programs for EDIHs are very close to the support program Change2Twin launched to DIHs.
With respect to technical innovations beyond state-of-the-art, there is interesting work in the now completed WP3 Pilot Experiments. One of the novel approaches developed in C2T is to create digital twins of the additive manufacturing process based on voxel models giving a unique approach to visualizing information about potential defects and deviations. The ideas behind this work are being brought forward in a new EIC funded Pathfinder Challenge project SCENE-B. Other developments in the pilot experiments include the use of photogrammetry for test data correlation on manufactured prosthetics, modelling of pallet displacement under transport using finite element modelling (FEM) and enhancing process traceability capabilities using RFID technology.
The direct technology impact of Change2Twin is composed of three components: 1. The enabling technology marketplace on clesgo’s Agora platform; 2. The impact of pilot experiment; 3. The impact of assessment and deployment experiments funded through FSTP during Change2Twin. Equally important is the long-term impact of the post-project Change2Twin community. This is in the process of being set up and will live on clesgo’s Agora platform. This community is targeting DIHs/EDIHs addressing digital twins for manufacturing. The community has a special focus on supporting cross-region cooperation between DIHs/EDIHs and facilitating cross-regional access to competence centres and setting up cross-regional cooperation