DIHNET.EU

There is no doubt 2020 has been a very particular year that has impacted every single aspect of our life. The Covid 19 pandemic has forced us to get adapted to new circumstances we had never experienced before. How have Digital Innovation Hubs managed this situation? What are their highlights of this year?

In January this year we wished you all the best digital innovation for 2020, but keep reading until the end to discover more about Digital Hub Logistics, Transylvania Digital Innovation Hub, Super Innovation Hub Super IoT, ITI Data Hub, IRIS DIH, BioSense Institute, and Lithuanian Robotics DIH.

February DIH of the Month: Digital Hub Logistics

Thorsten Huelsmann, Managing Director: “The year 2020 for the Digital Hub Logistics was also significantly influenced by the Covid 19 pandemic. This meant going virtual in most of our offerings and workshops. But still our SME enabling center reached more than 1550 participants through 80 webinars, virtual demonstrators, and lab tours. Also, we worked closely together with 56 SME on digitisation cases.

The first-time completely virtual edition of our ‘Digital Logistics Award’ reached start-ups and innovators from more than 13 countries. We received over 32 applications from 27 startups and 5 start-ins and were able to award the well-deserved winners remotely.

Another highlight is the creation of the ‘Silicon Economy’, it became synonymous with an emerging digital ecosystem based on automated negotiation, scheduling and control of flows of goods, enabling new digital business models for logistics. This project is supported by the implementation project ‘Blockchain Europe’, which will deliver scientific foundations, methods, and standards for the networked infrastructure of the Silicon Economy”.

March DIH of the Month: Transylvania Digital Innovation Hub

Bianca Muntean, Executive Director: “Despite the struggles 2020 has brought us, for Transilvania Digital Innovation Hub this year was full of achievements, and one of them was the national success in the selection for European Digital Innovation Hubs organised by the Authority for the Digitalisation of Romania & Romanian Ministry of Economy.

We continued to deliver relevant services to local SMEs, some of them through BOWI and DIH2, H2020 projects with focus on boosting digitalisation and robotics with the help of Digital Innovation Hubs. Through all these activities we have managed to strengthen our regional ecosystem and we have demonstrated our value at the international level.

We also have been involved in the consultation for the North-West Region Smart Strategy and contributed to the Digital Transformation Strategy of Cluj-Napoca, thus having the opportunity to boost the digital transformation of local public authorities from the region”.

April DIH of the Month: IAM 3D HUB

May DIH of the Month: Super Innovation Hub SuperIoT

Pirkko Taskinen, Manager: “The highlight of SuperIoT DIH in 2020 is the Reboot IoT Factory Project – Digitalisation of manufacturing industry. The project has a novel co-innovation model that solves industry grand challenges building on top-notch research and SME-services using IoT-technologies. Factories are committed to co-innovation model by opening up their production environment for joint development and sharing experiences for accelerated collaborated digitalisation.

All factories have high digitalisation maturity: sensor data, situation monitoring and analysis. This creates basis for advanced AI solutions. Innovation spillover happens with PoCs in every factory, then to another factory or even to completely different company and SME network”.

June DIH of the Month: ITI Data Hub

Daniel Saez, Coordinator: “Data Cycle Hub launched the website. In addition, the ITI data innovation space, the main experimentation facility in service inside the DCH has been awarded with the gold label as iSpace from BDVA.

As iSpace and Big Data Innovation Hub, ITI is coordinating the EUHubs4Data project, the European Federation of Data Driven Innovation Hubs, and is also the reference DIH in the REACH project. It also serves 35 experiments with companies and researchers inside Inndromeda alliance, and is key element in the DataRoom, the main facility for demonstration and experimentation with DATA for Industry 4.0”.

July DIH of the Month: Luxembourg DIH (L-DIH)

August DIH of the Month: IRIS DIH

Jorge Molina, Coordination Team: “During 2020 IRIS has continued working on the development of the DIH community that started in Navarra in 2015. This has been done through a joint work process that has resulted in the consolidation of a regional multidisciplinary consortium that covers the different types of services that a DIH must offer. As an example the activity of the Supercomputing Centre led by NASERTIC has also been consolidated, both at the service level and with the achievement of its membership to RES, the Spanish supercomputing network.

IRIS has also developed a wide dissemination of its activities through webinars specialised in topics such as artificial intelligence and supercomputing applied to personalised medicine, among others”.

September DIH of the Month: EXTREMADURA DIH (TECH4E)

Anto Recio, Project Manager: “During 2020 TECH4E has been consolidated as DIH, the collaboration agreement was signed between all the partners and the entire governance process as well as the catalog of assets, services and the business model was disclosed. The IHL platform has been designed: http://www.dih4e.eu/, and added to a large part of the digital ecosystem of companies in Extremadura.

This year, more than 100 companies have been served, providing digitisation services, not only in connection with solutions, but also in search of financing. More than 25 training actions have also been developed to strengthen the digital capacities of companies.”

October DIH of the Month: BioSense Institute

Dragana Matic, Project Manager: “BioSense Institute is a leading Serbian Digital Innovation Hub, bringing digital solutions to the broad farm-to-fork value chain. The PA4ALL Living Lab facilities are an enabling environment for prototyping, while the BioSense Accelerator offers guidance for AgTech entrepreneurs in the early stage.

This year we supported 5 early stage startups and onboarded 6 innovation experiments coming from the agROBOfood project, with around 15 more to come in 2021. through 2 Open Calls for agrifood robotics. We worked with large multi-national corporate stakeholders from various industries, national bodies such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy and the Cabinet of the Prime Minister as well as with citizens, farmers, educational institutions, other DIHs and policy makers”.

November DIH of the Month: Lithuanian Robotics DIH

Daumantas Simenas, Manager: “Throughout the year 2020, Lithuanian Robotics DIH has maintained its strong support for Lithuanian SMEs aiming to upgrade their performance by applying robotics and automation solutions to their processes. In total, more than 20 industry companies were technologically audited by experts united by this DIH.

The main advantage of its team is that it not only offers comprehensive reports and recommendations based on audits but also provides technical support and matchmaking with experienced solution developers. One successful example is a unique overhead robotics solution for intra-factory logistics which presents a new product for the industry and is currently being implemented in the textile company Devold with the help of solution and service providers Factobotics and scientific partner Panevėžys Mechatronics Center all united by the Lithuanian Robotics DIH.

Such great results of cooperation inspire our diverse and experienced team to continue working hard towards a more automated industry in Lithuania”.

Author: Laura Argiles, DIHNET.