“Productive4.0 is like a giant innovation machine”, project coordinator Thomas Gutt says. The numerous partners involved in the biggest ECSEL project are eager to come up with results. When introducing their institutions or companies, their visions and research activities on various occasions, they proudly fly the flag for Productive4.0. Apart from the sheer promotion effect, this helps to gain wider awareness for the potentials of the hands-on solutions the project is aiming at.

Highlighting the project at ECSEL JU Symposium

“Shaping Digital Innovation” was the motto of the two day ECSEL JU symposium with up to 300 attendants last June. On day one, Christoph Schmittner from Austrian partner AIT participated in a session titled “New horizons for the ECSEL JU Programme”. While talking about the specific challenges in the field of e-agriculture, he came to present Productive4.0 due to the fact that Arrowhead Framework is a relevant input for smart farming frameworks.

“Similar to how Arrowhead enables collaborative services and systems in the industrial domain, it could also be used in the agriculture to ease the cooperation between systems”, he said. The Arrowhead Framework plays a major role in the project where it is currently refined an extended.

In the meantime, Schmittner’s AIT colleague Erwin Schoitsch and project dissemination manager George Dimitrakopuolos were busy promoting and networking at the Productive4.0 stand in the halls. Eventually, they agreed on details concerning a close cooperation with the parallel running projects SemI40 and iDev40 under the umbrella of Industry4.E. The Lighthouse initiative serves as a perfect vehicle for deeper integration and synergies.

“A Unified approach towards industry digitalization”

The first half of day two focused on “how the projects impact real life and business”. During the wide discussion, specific aspects were brought up by Mateusz Bonecki from Polish partner Better Solutions and Naiara Goia speaking on behalf of Spanish Mondragon Corporation.

Mateusz pointed out the positive effects of collaborations within projects on his own company which is specialized in developing IT and embedded systems for logistics, agriculture and industry. For him, one of the reasons participating in Productive4.0 is the access to frameworks and platforms. “Thanks to Productive4.0 we have the opportunity to apply Arrowhead Framework in commercial projects like IoT devices fleet management in intelligent transportation systems”, he said, then capturing the focal point of Productive4.0 in a nutshell, “It demonstrates a unified approach towards industry digitalization.”

Naiara Goia first introduced the specific structure of the Mondragon ecosystem with its six businesses focusing on various areas, Ideko as RTO (registered training organization) and its University on the academic side. Reflecting on the impact on Mondragon’s business agents she mentioned the collaboration with global leaders as well as the rapid technological transfer, and she qualified the projects, one of which is Productive4.0, as “Success Stories”. “It’s a step forward in our Industry 4.0 related strategies”, she said.

Productive4.0 presented in Bilbao

Gorka Unamuno from Mondagon’s Ideko in turn says, “Productive4.0 has helped us identifying the research roadmap to create new or evolved products and services which will succeed in Tomorrow’s manufacturing industry and especially in the machine tool market.” Unamuno presented Ideko at the International Machine Tool Exhibition BIEMH in Bilbao last May where he took the chance to introduce attendants to Productive4.0…“The giant innovation machine”, as Thomas Gutt described it.