European Projects

MIDIH - Manufacturing Industry Digital Innovation Hubs

The MIDIH project, funded by Horizon 2020 within the Factories of Future cPPP and I4MS programs, aims at supporting and connecting national and local initiatives for the digitization of manufacturing industry. Through strategic partnerships and networking it will help boosting investment, collaborations, and innovation partnerships between solution providers and industries. The vision is to bring Europe to the forefront of Industry 4.0 market by 2023.

The MIDIH 4.0 project will implement the fast, dynamic, borderless, and disruptive side of the I4MS innovation coin (ICT for manufacturing SMEs) through:

- Technological services (interactive try-on demos, webinars, challenges, hackathons and awards) driven by young and dynamic ICT talents virtually meeting more experienced manufacturing engineers in a one-stop-shop global marketplace;

- Business services (ideas incubation, business acceleration, demand-offer matchmaking and brokerage, access to finance) to support SMEs, startups, web entrepreneurs as well as corporates in the delivery of innovative products and services, in accessing new markets, and in fund-raising;

- Skills building services (serious and role games, participative lessons and webinars, virtual experiments in physical teaching factories, professional courses for professionals and executives) to help SMEs / midcaps understanding and taking full advantage of new technologies as well as related business models.

http://www.midih.eu/

CLUSTERS 2.0 - Open network of hyper connected logistics clusters towards Physical Internet

Logistics clusters become value creators for the regions where they are formed, where a mix of good intermodal connections, logistics platforms, and large freight volumes are in place. Once a logistics cluster is well established, the scale creates a virtuous circle building increased availability of intermodal connections and value added services.

The vision of the Clusters 2.0 project is to leverage the full potential of European logistics clusters for an efficient and fully integrated transport system in Europe and to demonstrate scaling effects for companies collaborating within such clusters. The project will establish a European community for freight sharing and collaboration. It will provide solutions such as new modular loading units and innovative handling and transhipment technology, enhanced services based on the concept of Proximity Terminal Networks (PTN), and a toolbox for future logistics including large scale IT applications for a strong collaboration within and across logistics clusters

CLUSTERS 2.0 will increase commitment, performance, and coordination of terminals and hubs at both cluster and network level. The target is an increase of 50% in the intermodal freight managed within clusters.

http://www.clusters20.eu/

SENSE – Accelerating the Path Towards Physical Internet

The strategic objective of the SENSE project is to accelerate the path towards the Physical Internet, so that advanced pilot implementations of the Physical Internet concept will be well functioning and extended in industry practice by 2030, and hence contributing to a 30 % reduction in congestion, emissions and energy consumption.

To achieve this strategic objective SENSE will pursue the following specific objectives:

- A vision and detailed roadmap towards the Physical Internet until 2030 with focus on short and medium term actions.

- Monitor and boost Physical Internet development. 

- SENSE will create a strong “Physical Internet Community” that will include a relevant number of representatives of all involved stakeholders willing to support and invest on Physical Internet realisation.

http://www.etp-logistics.eu/

L4MS (Logistics for Manufacturing SMEs)

The ambition of the project L4MS (Logistics for Manufacturing SMEs) is to reduce the installation cost and time of mobile robots in a way that the investment in logistics automation will become extremely attractive for European manufacturing SMEs and Mid-Caps.

The L4MS project will deliver an open industrial IoT platform called OPIL (Open Platform for Innovations in Logistics) together with a 3D simulator to completely virtualize the intra-factory logistics automation and drastically accelerate the innovation process in this area. It will enable cost effective deployment of exceptionally small and flexible logistics solutions requiring no infrastructure change, no production downtime and no in-house expertise. The use of mobile robots will not only automate the logistics (50% of the production cost) but will also provide unprecedented flexibility on the factory floor for batch production.

http://www.l4ms.eu/

NEXT-NET: Next Generation Technologies for Networked Europe

Technological innovations and market-driven changes present companies with new challenges and therefore with the need to adapt the organization of their supply chains.

Internal and external factors such as accelerated technological developments, climate change or resource scarcity provide opportunities but pose also risks to European companies in the manufacturing, distribution, and logistics sectors. To remain competitive, it will be necessary to reconfigure the supply chains in terms of collaboration and organization in order to generate the best added value for the customer.

The NEXT-NET project aims at enabling a cross-industry and cross-technology initiative at European level focusing on the interaction between production and logistics. The consortium will identify and prioritise future topics for research and innovation within supply chain management. It will develop a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) combining the efforts of different communities such as EFFRA, SPIRE, ALICE and other ICTs to enable an interdisciplinary and cross-industry projection for the EU.

https://nextnetproject.eu/

Logistics Emissions Accounting & Reduction Network 'LEARN'

Businesses that measure their emissions have the opportunity to make well-considered decisions leading to improved efficiency and reduced emissions. The Logistics Emissions Accounting and Reduction Network project (LEARN) empowers business to reduce their carbon footprint across their global logistics supply chains. Through improved logistics emissions measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) the LEARN project

- supports companies through guidance, training & education, and a blueprint for a label

- together with companies tests and validates the practical applicability of emissions MRV and a label in complex multi-modal logistics settings

- develops and involves a multi-stakeholder network to maximize business uptake of carbon accounting and reduction.

http://www.learnproject.net/news/learn-international-workshop

Industrial Scenarios for Connected Factories – Connected Factories

The ‘Digitisation of manufacturing’, including concepts like Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT), connects people, devices, machines, and enterprises like never before. It's a paradigm shift that transforms industry in such a strong way that it is considered as the 4^th industrial revolution (Industrie 4.0). For many years, companies and research organisations have been addressing the related challenges and opportunities both at national and European level (through the Factories of the Future PPP and related activities). Building upon these activities and a consolidated expert network, the ConnectedFactories project will establish and maintain a structured overview of available and upcoming technological approaches and best practices needed for mastering this paradigm shift. Present and future needs and challenges of the manufacturing industries will be identified in order to characterise possible scenarios of how digital platforms will enable the digital integration and interoperability of manufacturing systems and processes.

http://www.effra.eu/index.php/research-a-innovation-65/connectedfactories

TransformingTransport

Big Data will have a profound economic and societal impact in the mobility and logistics sector, which is one of the most important industries in the world contributing to approximately 15% of GDP. For this sector, Big Data is expected to lead to 500 billion USD in value worldwide in time and fuel savings as well as savings of 380 megatons CO₂. However, today only 19 % of EU mobility and logistics companies employ Big Data solutions as part of value creation and business processes.

The TransformingTransport project demonstrates the transformations of the mobility and logistics market through Big Data. It validates the technical and economic viability of Big Data that helps to transform transport processes and services towards significantly increased operational efficiency, deliver improved customer experience, and foster new business models. TransformingTransport will address seven pilot domains of major importance for the mobility and logistics sector in Europe and covering different modes.

http://www.transformingtransport.eu/

Safe human-robot interaction in logistic applications for highly flexible warehouses – SafeLog

When it comes to automation, safety is always a key factor. To ensure that no human comes to harm by machinery, nowadays there are two concepts. The easiest way is to keep humans completely separated from automated area by safety measures such as laser barriers or light or solid fences. Whenever this safety barrier is interrupted, the complete system, or parts of it, are shut down, stopping the operation of the system. Especially in logistics operations such a concept is neither desirable and nor even feasible. Thus, the vision of Warehouse Co-workers becomes more and more important to advance automation as an assistant system to the human worker.

The vision of the SafeLog project is to develop a large-scale flexible warehouse system which enables a safe and efficient collaboration of human and AGVs with heterogeneous skillsets in the same area and at the same time.

http://safelog-project.eu/

Protecting Maritime Supply Chain IT Infrastructure – MITIGATE

The main goal of MITIGATE is to realize a radical shift in risk management methodologies for the maritime sector towards a collaborative evidence-driven Maritime Supply Chain Risk Assessment approach alleviating the current limitations of risk management frameworks. To this end, the project will integrate, validate, and commercially exploit an effective, collaborative, standards-based risk management system for port’s Critical Information Infrastructures, which shall consider all threats arising from the supply chain, including threats associated with portCIIs interdependencies and associated cascading effects.

http://www.mitigateproject.eu/

Strengthening European Transport Research and Innovation Strategies – SETRIS

The SETRIS Project brings together five Transport European Technology Platforms (ETPs) – road, rail, air, water and logistics – and a variety of their members as partners within one single initiative to develop a framework for long-term cooperation supporting new approaches to research and innovation strategies. This cooperation will help facilitating the delivery of a truly integrated transport system and defining comprehensive, credible, and realistic implementation plans for joint Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas.

http://newrail.org/setris/