EIT Manufacturing Summit 2021: Watch the after event film!

“Smarter Factories – Smarter people”

On Tuesday November 30, keynote speakers Maria da Graça Carvalho, Member of the European Parliament, and Dr. Paul Rübig, Former Member of the European Parliament, Member of the EESC, and Member of the Governing Board of the EIT, pointed out how the nature of innovations has changed towards industrial market applications. They also agreed about the importance engaging with higher education, innovation, and research to keep up with the change.

These thoughts were further elaborated by Roberto Saracco, Senior Advisor at Reply, in his keynote speech “Smarter Factories, Smarter People”, putting an emphasis on the collaboration between humans and machines to tackle one of the biggest challenges in the manufacturing sector: to match efficiency with flexibility.

Panel: “Future of Manufacturing: A People Driven Transformation”

A panel discussion on the “Future of Manufacturing: A People Driven Transformation” featuring representatives of EIT Manufacturing member organisations closed the first day. Dr. Hans Jörg Stotz, Management Board Member at FESTO Didactic SE, Lucia Chierchia, Managing Partner at GELLIFY, Kristina Wagner, Vice President Corporate Research at KUKA, Fredrik Elieson, Competence Transformation Specialist at VOLVO Group and Željko Pazin, Executive Director at EFFRA, discussed how the industry can prepare for the challenges ahead regarding the transformation of jobs and how all of us can make sure that people will be in the center of the transformation.

The discussion included lessons on the increased need of intrapreneurial culture within companies and new types of leadership in manufacturing. Companies need to become more “fluid”, revising processes based on skills and knowledge of employees rather than proposing vertical roles. The panelists also claimed that the cooperation with national and European authorities, redefining the political frameworks and environments according to newly emerged industry requirements, will be a critical aspect for the success of this transformation. Society, industry, and public authorities need to collaborate to make the necessary changes happen.

Dimitris Mavrikios, COO, EIT Manufacturing opened the second day of the summit speaking about strategic collaboration and bridging the whole of Europe. He was joined on the virtual stage by Monika Zsigri, Deputy Head of Unit at DG Regio, sharing about the EU’s Cohesion Policy and interregional innovation instruments.

The second day also contained highlights of how EIT Manufacturing’s education and business creation activities are contributing to a sustainable transformation of the manufacturing sector.

“The most important skills are those that help people master technologies, and handle complexity…We live in a word of interdependencies between people and machines. We need to train people to be able to address business and societal challenges with a purpose!”, said  Paola FANTINI, Director of Education at EIT Manufacturing.

“The Ability to think outside the box from an entrepreneurial mindset” added Tobias ELMQUIST, Director of Business Creation at EIT Manufacturing.

Some projects were selected to present on the live stage in order to bring the participants closer to the Education and Business Creation pillars: EIT Manufacturing Master & Doctoral School, AM Healthy Future, FactoryBricks, Redville, ArcLub One, Probility, Ondosense, NightingaleHQ and LINQCASE.

LEADERS competition for  women innovators across the EIT RIS countries.

The 6 finalists from this year’s LEADERS competition pitched their outstanding ideas and created a spin-off that will bring sustainability to the future of manufacturing from ceramic beehives, High-quality mushroom production to biodegradable laminating film. Three were awarded with financial prizes as well as international publicity through our network:

• 1st place: Angela Ivanova, LAM’ON project: Biodegradable laminating film and packaging foil.
• 2nd place: Raquel Verdejo, Akelite project: Endeavour to create a spin-off that will bring sustainability to a high-performance material.
• 3rd place: Todorka Lepkova, Ceramic Beehives project: Dedicated to development and implementation of innovations mainly in the fields of ceramics.

Panel: “Well-skilled manufacturing workforce across Europe”

In this fruitful round table, the panelists highlighted that the technical advances in industry 4.0 are only one side of the medal, but it is important to combine technological development with the training of people!

“Data is the fuel for future innovation, and the corporation between EIT Manufacturing & GAIAX aims at improving & Increasing data economy and business in Europe” said Martina Malakova, Coordinator GAIA-X Hub Slovakia. Our industry at the same time needs to speed up education and training cycles.
José Carlos Caldeira, Manufuture High level group Member, was convinced that “Decision makers need to be trained, they need to understand the impact of new digital technologies!”

The third day of the summit offered a deep dive into EIT Manufacturing’s Innovation and Regional Innovation Scheme RIS projects under the title of “RIS Countries as Game Changers: Bringing innovation from RIS to Europe”.

The day also included a final for startups coming from the RIS countries (EVO-R project), and a panel session featuring EIT Manufacturing’s Co-Location Center Directors (CLCs). Our 5 CLC Directors discussed the role of SMEs in the different ecosystems and their specific challenges in industry 4.0.

The European SME landscape is very diverse with regard to innovation, but also full of opportunities. Ongoing geopolitical changes bring new possibilities to especially Eastern European countries to develop new capabilities in terms of innovativeness. But many SMEs are having troubles to successfully manage this transition phase. Their challenges relate to the adaption of new business models, but also a lack of qualified workforce possessing both, hard- and soft skills.