Digital & Collaborative Solutions for Innovative Manufacturing Ecosystems, Flexible Production Systems for Competitive Manufacturing, Human-machine Co-working for Socially Sustainable Manufacturing, Low Environmental Footprint Systems & Circular Economy for Green Manufacturing
Empowering SMEs call aims to attract, select, and support SMEs willing to further innovate their existing solutions (TRL 8/9) to adapt and expand the market beyond their current applications.
The activity will provide financial support to the selected SME (in case of a single applicant) or to the SME and the end-user (in case of small consortia). In addition, the selected applicants will receive support services provided by EIT Manufacturing during the implementation of their project and after the end of it, aiming for a successful commercialization of the results.
Who can Apply?
Empowering SMEs call is open to applications from SMEs (including start-ups) and Large Companies (applying as industrial end-users together with an SME). The SME must submit a proposal fitting at least one of the following topics:
Optimising production processes and increasing resource efficiency through digital solutions
Socially sustainable and human-centric manufacturing
Environmentally sustainable manufacturing through circular business models and new technologies
A total of 67 proposals were submitted in response to the Empowering SMEs Call for Proposals.
The evaluation of the proposals took place from February 2024 to March 2024. Applicants were informed about the outcome of the evaluations in April 2024.
The successful proposals completed the negotiation phase and started the activity with EIT Manufacturing in June 2024.
More information on the selected activities is provided here below:
YK-Platfom (YK stands for You Know) and consists in a software robotic platform that unify in a single environment the management of an advanced robotic cell. The new solution will keep all its advantages but will be more dedicated to the target-market application. The new product will be ready to be sold in the market as a new version of YK-Platoform, dedicated to metalwork related robotic application. To summarise, our new solution will be developed and installed in an assembly line where metal components and (mainly) metal sheets will be handled and manipulated with a lot of variety. Advanced robotics is required in order to automate this process, our new solution will bring to the end-user all the benefits of advanced robotic while keeping the complexity of the process low and easy to handle, without requiring specialised operator and robotic knowledge.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
YK-Robotics
End-User:
Conf Industrie Srl
EIT Contribution: € 100,000
Centiloc’s core offering is a smart shelving system that utilizes NFC technology for precise geolocation and inventory tracking. Centiloc’s solution is primarily aimed at sectors where inventory management of high value parts is critical and challenging, such as the Manufacturing Sector, the Luxury Goods Manufacturing, and Retail. Centiloc has significantly reduced the cost of its solution by a factor of five, making it more accessible for industries with extensive shelving systems exceeding 100 meters. This cost reduction, coupled with the integration of dynamic pick-to-light systems, substantially enhances the value proposition of Centiloc’s solution for large-scale inventory management.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
CENTILOC
End-User:
CIXI
EIT Contribution: € 87,675
The solution, ZEO LITE, aims to leverage the industry expertise of ZEO Technology and the manufacturing capabilities of TASUBINSA to produce a synergistic effect that enhances the potential and growth of SMEs. This partnership is expected to result in the development of innovative practices and technologies that can be adopted by SMEs to improve their operations and competitiveness in the market.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
ZEO Technology for Industry
End-User:
TALLERES AUXILIARES DE SUBCONTRATACIÓN INDUSTRIA NAVARRA S.A (TASUBINSA)
EIT Contribution: € 100,000
The proposed Auto-Coil Release Assistant solution aims to enhance Quality Assurance procedures related to the surface within coil manufacturing industries by introducing a novel system able to automatically and in real-time sort every produced coil, based on surface characteristics (defects, localization, pattern, density). This AI-driven solution encompasses key parameters such as material quality, material value, and the further necessary production steps (downstream processing).
Participants in the Project:
SME:
D-Cube
End-User:
Elval-Halcor Aluminum rolling division
EIT Contribution: € 100,000
TF KnowNet+ aims to deliver a novel modular training program to address upskilling and reskilling in the increasingly relevant topics of circularity and remanufacturing. This program will leverage innovative approaches and will integrate design for remanufacturing and design for hybrid additive manufacturing. Developed collaboratively by a network of industrial and academic experts, TF KnowNet+ seeks to empower 280 engineers and designers across various industries (such as automotive, aerospace, energy, and naval) equipping them with the essential technical, innovation and entrepreneurial competencies. This will enable them to investigate Hybrid AM solutions for re-manufacturing high-value components within their respective organizations.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
Metronik d.o.o
End-User:
Weiler Abrasives d.o.o
EIT Contribution: € 99,999
Canonical Robots is expanding its technological expertise with the development of CIRPLASTIC, a new solution tailored for the plastic classification sector, with an initial focus on the automotive industry and broader applicability in the plastic recycling industry. This innovative solution represents a significant shift from our existing product, KIWISORT, which is designed for the agro-food sector to determine the ripeness of kiwi fruits.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
Metronik d.o.o
EIT Contribution: € 59,500
LINQcase have developed a cutting-edge non-destructive electromagnetic solution, uniquely designed to inspect and detect alterations in the mechanical properties of metallic parts. This solution is vital in industry processes where mechanical properties are modified. Traditional methods, often destructive, incur significant costs and time expenditure for manufacturers. The new solution is designed to offer complete magnetisation without the limitations present in the previous versions, employ array of sensors, and an improved self-learning software.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
LINQ – Linqcase Industrial Solutions S.L.
End-User:
JTEKT EUROPE
EIT Contribution: € 100,000
Be Energy’s new solution evolves from their existing battery regeneration technology. The key difference is the shift from a curative approach, where batteries are regenerated after significant capacity loss, to a preventive maintenance model. This new approach involves frequent, regular regeneration of batteries, maintaining them at a consistently high level of performance.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
Be Energy
End-User:
Optimist
EIT Contribution: € 65,800
Within the IPS Products Suite, there is the product IPS IMMA (Intelligently Moving MAnikin), an easy-to-use software tool aimed at Digital Human Modelling (DHM) simulation, addressed to simulate human factors in the virtual product development. Today IPS IMMA is already commercialised and used to simulate and predict human motions and behaviour on reachability, visibility and assemblability already in an early design phase. IPS IMMA also allows the ergonomic evaluation of the manual process, with the uniqueness of the automatic generation of the manikin family based on the anthropometric data of the industry workers, thus with the possibility to automatically evaluate which workers can easily execute a task and how to modify the workplace to allow all workers to execute their job at that workplace. The new solution targets new markets and sectors, such as biomedical and aerospace, fashion and textile, and the automotive industry.
Participants in the Project:
SME:
Flexstructures Italia
EIT Contribution: € 59,500
The new solution to be developed through this project is targeted to increase coloring stability to enable customers to replicate the same color throughout multiple production lines up to operating different production locations at different global regions with the same results.
