In the context of a European initiative already launched and currently under building (Call NMBP 22-2017) the ‘PSS-EURO-Network’ MRSEI has the ambition to create and establish a European scientific network on the management of the transformation of industrial Business Models, through servitization innovation strategies. Within the scientific and industrial community which is currently actively working on Product-Service-Systems, a strong originality of the PSS-EURO-Network is to put the focus of the research on the methods and tools to transform the industrial organizations themselves and their Business Models, as a way to go beyond current European researches focusing mainly on the engineering of the PSS solution. With the ambition to create, then deploy concretely via European projects, a consistent set of methods and tools aiming at strongly increasing the success rate of industrial Business Models transformations towards PSS solutions, the PSS-EURO-Network can bring important societal impacts via the transformation of consumptions behaviors thanks to the product-service approach. The first European project answer taken in charge by this PSS-EURO-Network is already quite mature, and the definition of the scientific aims, research program and full consortium is already well advanced for the first phase of the submission: a summary is given in the following sections. The project coordinated by ARMINES-Mines Saint Etienne has a large European representation, first based on 5 key scientific laboratories gathering strong complementary competencies on PSS and Business Models (France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, and United Kingdom). But, additionally, the consortium includes a rather large network of industrial and transfer actors (still under building), aiming at a large European impact of these research works. The activity program defined in the MRSEI project has the ambition not only to build a first submission to a European call (covering the finalization of phase 1 and all the phase 2) , but also to build a longer term active Network, with a clear Strategy of European project building. This PSS-EURO-Network would also use Digital Technology through a living internet virtual community, which would be created and implemented operationally thanks to the MRSEI project

Business and IT Alignment is important challenge, as we are facing a dramatic change in the way we rely, depend and interact with ICT that influences our everyday life. Although “digital natives” will soon enter the workforce, there is still a huge gap between the business domain and ICT domain in terms of awareness, common understanding or expertise. This hampers the take-off of technology such as Cloud Computing. Hence, we are facing a competition, between global-market players who quicker succeed in changing business into the Cloud to raise ICT efficiency and reduce costs. This is particularly true for SMEs that have started to embrace virtualisation or at best IaaS offers but the exploding and dynamic market of components available on the PaaS or SaaS level demands for expertise and time typically not available at SMEs. Business processes are commodity when defining business activities in human understandable way in form of “sequences of manual, semi-automatic or automated tasks with the aim to achieve the company’s goal”. Previous work in plugIT mapped business processes on static ICT configurations available at a company’s site, assuming ICT is still mainly configured on platform or component level. CloudSocket envisions the idea of “Business Process as a Service”, where domain-specific business processes like employee registration at social insurance, tax report, or legal verification are supported by workflows that optimally match the ICT support for the selected process. The ICT support is expected to be realized by available platforms or software components from PaaS or SaaS platforms. CloudSocket introduces the concept BPaaS that fulfills the business process needs thanks to smart alignment techniques, packages this BPaaS as “extended Cloudlets” that are autonomously deployable and include adaptive rules to appropriately react in a multi-cloud environment by keeping SLAs and process-based billing. Hence, the vision is to “plug business” into the “Cloud”.

Multi-stage manufacturing, which is typical in important industrial sectors such as automotive, house hold appliance and semiconductor manufacturing just to name few, is inherently complex. The main idea of GO0D MAN project is to integrate and combine process and quality control for a multi –stage manufacturing production into a distributed system architecture built on agent-based Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and smart inspection tools designed to support Zero-Defect Manufacturing (ZDM) strategies. Data analytics tools provide a mean for knowledge build-up, system control and ZDM management. Real time and early identification of deviations and trends, performed at local level, allow to prevent the generation of defects at single stage and their propagation to down-stream processes, enabling the global system to be predictive (early detection of process faults) and proactive (self-adaptation to different conditions). The GO0D MAN project is based on the results of previous successful EU projects and integrates them to realize and deploy a Zero Defect Manufacturing framework for multi-stage production lines, in collaboration with industry partners, a system integrator, two technology providers and three end users. The use cases are representative of key European industrial sectors and have different types of multi-stage production systems: the first use case concerns highly automated serial mass production of automotive components, the second use case is about batch production of high precision mechanical components for automotive electro valves, the third use case produces professional customized products such as ovens for restaurants. Successful completion of this project will provide a replicable system architecture for ZDM. The results will be broadly applicable in a variety of industries to improve the overall quality and productivity of production systems.