Projects resulting from the first collaboration between EIT Manufacturing and EFFRA were completed at the end of 2022. On 28 February 2023, they were presented to an illustrious online audience. This follows the cooperation agreement signed between EFFRA and EIT Manufacturing in October 2021 and the launch of their first cooperation via an open Call for Proposals. 

The three projects presented were UPMASS, ARTOM, and LAMM. These projects had undergone the evaluation process and had demonstrated the readiness for market deployment. The activities of these projects were presented by their respective project leaders: 

• UPMASS – Unified Predictive Maintenance & Scheduling System – presented by George Siaterlis, Research Associate, LMS, and Evangelos Xanthakis, Senior Software Developer and Analyst, CASP 

This project focused on predictive maintenance and scheduling product to support manufacturers in their maintenance activities. 

• ARTOM – AR for Training, Operation and Maintenance of Metal Forming Machines – presented by Vasilis Siatras, Researcher, Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation LMS 

Augmented Reality supporting the whole life cycle of human interaction with the machine from training to operation and maintenance. 

• LAMM (Filomeno Martina, CEO, co-founder, Executive director, WAAM3D) 

LAMM focused on Metal Additive Manufacturing and developed a Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) kit. The project created two kinds of end effectors, tailored for depositing Ti64 and steel. The outcome has been integrated in 3 pilot lines. 

EFFRA and EIT Manufacturing welcomed the representatives of the projects, as well as European Commission representatives from the Directorates-General CNECT, RTD, EAC and GROW, thereby emphasising the dimension of the collaboration. The opening remarks were made by Cecilia Warrol, SB Chair, EIT Manufacturing, Klaus Beetz, CEO, EIT Manufacturing, Zeljko Pazin, Executive Director, EFFRA, and Konstantinos Georgoulias, Director of RIS & EU Affairs, EIT Manufacturing, who extended their warm welcome and expressed their satisfaction with the results achieved so far. 

Xavier Baillard, Innovation Director EIT Manufacturing opened the floor to Q&A and discussion on the next steps of the initiative after briefly presenting an overview of the activities and the overall initiative. 

Broad support from 4 Directorate-Generals (DGs) of the European Commission

Representatives from DG CNECT, DG RTD, DG EAC and DG GROW attended the exchange and emphasised their support to the initiative, drawing attention to the potential benefits of collaboration by creating synergies for the manufacturing community in Europe. 

EIT Manufacturing plans to build on the success of the INNOVATE TOGETHER program’s pilot and expand it to accelerate the market deployment of more innovative results from the Factories of the Future/Made in Europe initiative. In parallel, plans for a pilot programme with the aim of training end-users’ personnel on how to effectively adopt and use exploitable results with Teaching and Learning Factories are currently under development. The outcome of this programme will be to accelerate these projects with a solution provider, providing transformation support for the end-user.