SMARTY celebrates its 1st Interregional Thematic Seminar in Leuven

SMARTY project partners representing seven European regions met in Leuven on February 25-26 to exchange good practices on regional policies aimed at supporting Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in their knowledge and integration of Industry 4.0 solutions. The research centre Flanders Make in Leuven, Belgium, hosted this Interregional Thematic Seminar, which ended up with a great visit to the Genk-based company Provan.

This first Interregional Thematic Seminar within the Interreg Europe project SMARTY brought together 19 partner representatives from seven European regions. The seminar kicked off with the presentation of the regional analyses, consisting of in-depth studies on the innovation ecosystems and needs of SMEs in the participating regions: Tuscany (Italy), Mazovia (Poland), Lapland (Finland), Leeds City Region (UK), Slovenia, Castilla y León (Spain) and Catalonia (Spain).

Representatives of each region also exchanged experiences and good practices regarding policies to foster the uptake of the Industry 4.0 paradigm by the SMEs.

Some of the good practices exposed were:

• Building blocks, tools and systems for the factories of the future (GOSTOP) programme - Ana Cvetko, Government Office of the Republic of Slovenia for Development and European Cohesion Policy
• Industry of the Future Platform - creating and supporting the Industry 4.0 ecosystem at the national level - Anna Pajak, Łukasiewicz Research Network-ITeE
• Industry 4.0 Alliances: improving collaborative connections through innovation challenges - The IoT Catalan Alliance case - Eduard Balbuena, i2CAT
• Plant Run - Craig Lawrance, Textile Centre of Excellence
• Regional 4.0 Audit for SMEs in Tuscany - Paolo Guarnieri, Municipality of Prato
• Access Innovation - Alex Clarke, Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership / West Yorkshire Combined Authority
• Centr@Tec Program - Victoria Molpeceres, Head of Unit. Industry 4.0, Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León

Our colleague Ana María Losa presented the Analysis of the Regional Context in Industry 4.0 of Castilla y León, including several examples of good practices. ICAMCyL works in this project hand in hand with the Institute for Business Competitiveness (ICE) of the Regional Government of Castilla y León, which promotes the Centr@tec program. Centr@tec is a training and support program for businesses that includes actions in the areas of Industry 4.0, digitalization, innovation in processes and products/services design, internationalization of R&D and support for technology-based entrepreneurs.

The second day of the seminar we visited one of the first ‘factories of the future’ in Flanders: the metal processing company Provan. Through this study visit, the project partners gained an in-depth understanding about the practical implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies in a business environment.

Now, SMARTY project will move forward towards its next milestone. An Interregional Policy Brokerage workshop will be organised by the Regional Council of Lapland to deepen in the analysis of good practices and build the partners’ capacity to increase the uptake of Industry 4.0 solutions. The workshop will address two key topics: Industry 4.0 Audit actions and Clusters policies and will take place online on 4-5 June 2020.

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SMARTY is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the umbrella of the European Union programme Interreg Europe with around 1.99 M EUR ERDF (2.42 M EUR Total Budget). It runs over a period of four years and started on 1st of August, 2019.