On 26th April was launched the IoT4Industry project in Sophia Antipolis, France. Also called “Towards smarter means of production in European manufacturing through the use of the Internet of Things technologies”, aims to enable European manufacturing SMEs to integrate the use of IoT and related components to enhance their productivity, profitability, innovation capacities and keep them competitive on the global scale.

The initiative in the framework of the European H2020-INNOSUP-2016-2017 acts as a “catalyzer”of a new industrial value chain: it will support  SMEs interested in the matter of smart manufacturing providing training and matchmaking actions and selecting “champions” SMEs  to finance their  IoT cross-border and cross-sectorial collaborative projects .

IoT4Industry consortium includes 3 ICT clusters [The French Secured Communicating Solution cluster (SCS) the german microTEC Südwest (mTSW) and DSP Valley in Belgium ] including 2 ESCA Gold Labels and 3 Advanced Manufacturing clusters (the Italian MESAP, the 1rench Mont-Blanc Industries (MBI), Pôle MecaTech (PMT) in Belgium and one technology center in United Kingdom (MTC Manufacturing Technology Centre).

IoT4Industry represents a sui generis initiative in the panorama of EU plans because of its direct management of the funds to reduce bureaucracy or potential barriers for SMEs and its synergy with other funds and initiatives (HORIZON 2020, COHESION FUND 2014-2020, SAE, EFFRA, EPOSS, I4MS): this close interaction ensures alignment both in terms of strategies, implementation issues and cross-fertilisation between the different countries, regions and actors to strategically empower SMEs support.  It also represents a success story in terms of willfulness: in fact in 2016 the proposal received a good score by European Commission but it didn’t pass the selection; the consortium never gave up and tenaciously proposed it in 2017, winning the challenge!

Iot4Industry aims at bringing SMEs to an upper level of new value chain of smart manufacturing, increasing the efficiency of their production if possible without moving the production to low-cost countries, that is maximizing the impact of the “IoTisation” of industrial SMEs and contribute to a more prosperous Europe.