Democratized innovation holds undeniable promise for European producers, but the integration with corporate innovation practices is in its infancy. While the interest is real, it is still neither easy or efficient for producers – especially SMEs to benefit from collaborative production. The iPRODUCE project takes well proven concepts and approaches (from DIY manufacturing, FabLabs, Makerspace), and aims to upscale them through innovative technology solutions and to install them in well-connected multi-stakeholder ecosystems under an umbrella concept of collaborative Manufacturing Demonstration Facilities (cMDF)”. We organize our work under a social-manufacturing platform that enables multi-stakeholder interactions and collaborations to support user-driven open-innovation and co-creation. At the heart of the iPRODUCE platform is an open digital space supported by a set of innovative tools that cover matchmaking, secure interactions, generative product design, process orchestration, agile prototyping, usability evaluations and lifecycle management. We complement these technical tools with a strong social component that aims at easing the notorious hardship of engagement with makers and aim to open up to new maker segments, while we improve on SoA tools for Lead User Innovation identification. The iPRODUCE platform will be deployed in six local ‘ecosystems’ which cover different levels of maturity with collaborative production, diverse objectives and application areas spanning from home furnishing, automotive/mobility, consumer photography, medical ecquipment and more. The platform supports knowledge and resource sharing across cMDFs and all our results will be monitored and evaluated.

The EFPF project realises a federated smart factory ecosystem by primarily interlinking 4 smart factory platforms, from the FoF-11-2016 cluster, through an open and interoperable Data Spine. The federation of the 4 base platforms is complemented by industrial platforms, collaboration tools and smart factory systems, specifically selected to support connected factories in lot-size-one manufacturing. The federated EFPF platform delivers enhances value and reduces the barrier to innovation by providing seamless access to services and solutions that are currently dispersed. In parallel the platform provides the necessary infrastructure, tools and support for novel service creation and validations by third parties. Further, by fostering healthy competition in the smart factory ecosystem, the EFPF platform will ensure that the needs of the evolving smart manufacturing industry are met for the long term. The EFPF federation is offered to the manufacturing and logistic companies as an open platform; to utilise the offered functionality, experiment with innovation approaches and develop custom solutions based on specific needs. The project demonstrates the power of federation through 3 embedded large scale pilots focusing on lot-size-one manufacturing and sustainable value networks in diverse sectors, while a cross sectorial circular economy pilot is also incorporated. The results of the pilots are openly made available as lessons learned and best practices. The creation of the European smart factory ecosystem is supported by offering interested companies technical and financial support. A dedicated budget is allocated to offer financial support to companies who are interested in using the EFPF platform to enhance their businesses. The project is primarily composed of SMEs who have the agility to quickly react and adopt innovative solutions, while experience and market reach of big players such Siemens and others is also leveraged.