Manutelligence targets the product-service emerging trend; aiming at providing to EU manufacturing companies: - Efficiency in the design process, through ubiquitous cross-disciplinary collaborative management of P-S engineering knowledge across the entire life-cycle phases; - Complete integration of Product Lifecycle Management and Service Lifecycle Management, using methodologies and tools to support cross development; - Involvement of all the key partakers in the supply chain, including customers; - The ability to Search, retrieve and reuse data from heterogeneous data sources during design, manufacturing, testing and usage; - To manage, reuse and optimize designs, promoting modularity and Engineering Design Codified Knowledge, through KBE and design automation; - Close knowledge loop cycles between design, manufacturing, testing and use of products; - To extend and improve the use of Simulation and optimize it through comparison with test bench and real usage data; - Precise and quick measures and simulations of Cost and Sustainability issues, through Life Cycle Cost (LCC), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and CO2 footprint . To achieve these needs, ManuTelligence aims to integrate best in class methodology and tools from research and industry, resulting in a secure, cross disciplinary collaborative Product/Service Design and Manufacturing Engineering Platform. This platform will enable designers and engineers to access through natural 3D experiences to data from both the traditional enterprise IT systems (CAD, CAX, PLM, MES, etc.) and IoT enabled systems for physical products information and knowledge management. Such a platform, to have success on the market, needs to be inclusive, facilitating the cooperation and collaboration of enterprises. For this reason, it has been decided from the draft architecture, that it will have interfaces based on Open Standard (e.g. STEP and the OpenGroup QLM.

Production of electrical insulation components is globally a B$1.19 business. Cellulose is one commonly used raw material for insulation components. State-of-the-art production methods for high quality electrical insulation products are typically labour intensive and slow. The main objective of NOVUM is to develop and demonstrate a compact and feasible pilot line concept based on novel processing technologies for rapid, design driven production of advanced cellulose-based electrical insulation components. This new pilot line will result in significant efficiency improvement and higher productivity and flexibility, while ensuring lower operational costs as compared with the state-of-the-art process. Manual production will be replaced by an automated manufacturing concept with increased resource efficiency, including 40% reduction in labour time and 60% reduction in waste generation, 20% lower energy consumption and 40% decrease in operating costs. Processing technologies in the focus of NOVUM are 3D printing of cellulose-based materials having thermoplastic features as well as foam forming and thermoforming of cellulose fibres. These three technologies will be developed in parallel to each other, together with the cellulose materials, in order to reach optimal combination for the pilot line concept. Besides technical feasibility, the decision on the pilot line concept will be based on the end use requirements as well as on economic, social and environmental impacts including circular economy considerations. The novel manufacturing concept will also enable exploitation of the full potential of design in generating form and thus novel functionalities to cellulose-based electrical insulation components. In addition, the concept will be based on multipliable technologies, enabling their transition and wide adoption for cellulose-based materials across the process industry and for applications beyond NOVUM for other industrial areas.

VITAL aims to generate fundamental knowledge and expertise that will underpin future European activities to substitute existing synthetic thermoplastics with those from bio-based sources and in so doing, enable the European the polymer processing sector to achieve a paradigm shift towards bio-based alternatives for cleaner, more climate neutral industrial value chains. This will be achieved through the development of thermoplastic foaming processes, combined with smart digital control approaches, that will enable bio-based thermoplastics to be processed both on traditional processing equipment (for foam injection moulding and bead foaming) as well as developing a globally unique 3D printing approach for foamed thermoplastics. These processing technologies represent three 'value-chains'. In addition, bio-based thermoplastic mechanical recycling developments will underpin progression of engineering applications towards a 'Circularity by Design' approach. The knowledge produced will be widely disseminated through various conduits, including a Learning Factory that aims to give access to pilot scale industrial lines for each of the 3 value chains in order to reduce the risk for industry for adoption of the technologies. VITAL brings together a world-leading consortium consisting of industrial processors and equipment manufacturers along with end-user partners from the automotive, electronics and marine sectors and leading research and technologies organisations from across Europe. The 6 use cases in VITAL combine to address the expected outcomes, and create pathways to mitigate ~75,000 tonnes CO2 eq/year from fossil-based materials through a conversion to bio-based materials. The consortium along with the Advisory board will provide a multiplier effect to broaden these impacts with further applications and uses. VITAL's disruptive approaches will help industrial adoption by addressing the cost-challenges of bio-based materials by optimising processing and material use.

EU’s Innovation Union Initiative underlines the importance of innovations in all sectors of the economy. For creating new innovations we need individuals that are capable to participate in diverse everyday innovation processes. One main problem is that universities don’t have proper tools to measure the development of the students’ innovation competencies during their studies. Therefore, we don’t actually know which teaching and learning methods are effective. Also companies are lacking tools and knowledge to assess these competencies in various settings: in recruitment processes and internal development activities. Unawareness of innovation competencies causes great economic losses for employers annually. The FINCODA project, with a significant number of universities and innovation-intensive companies from 5 countries, aims at providing solutions for a solid path for forthcoming innovators from university to companies. We shall test new forms of enhancing innovation competencies in university-company cooperation. Real-life learning environments bring added value for all stakeholders and lower the students’ threshold to enter the working life. As a main tangible output of the project we are creating and validating a Software Application tool for innovation competencies assessment. It will be available as an OER. We shall also illustrate that - especially when speaking about innovation competencies – well-organized and structured behaviour assessment can be at the same time cost-effective, reliable, valid and value adding, compared to traditional written tests. European-wide challenges demand multinational solutions. Investments to innovation competencies development gain positive impacts to the competitiveness of European companies. Joint European processes in assessment of learning outcomes are also one key aspect in the creation of a well-functioning European Higher Education Area. Main tangible outputs of the project, namely FINCODA Barometer Innovation Assessment Tool, the Software Application for online use of the FINCODA Barometer and the Online Rater Training Toolkit, are in the end of the project serving the purposes of Universities and companies in assessing students’ and staff members’ innovation capacity. These outputs are already used by the partners of the FINCODA project but – thanks to successful promotion – also by several organizations in Europe and even in other continents. It is foreseen that these outputs, which are also after the project available as Open Educational Resources, will gain added value for hundreds or thousands of organizations globally. FINCODA achieved a major class impact by influencing to the European Commission Higher Education policies. Several joint Innovation Competences workshops with EC officials reached its climax on May 2017 in Commission Staff Working Document to the Renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education; FINCODA Barometer was acknowledged as a promising approach in promoting entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation skills.

The LeaderSHIP project brings together main industry leaders, EU and national social partners representatives, regional clusters and education providers to collectively boost innovation, competitiveness and resilience in the European shipbuilding sector and the entire maritime value chain, through the development of a sectoral skills strategy, the design and implementation of EU-level training and by building sustainable cooperation of the EU Shipbuilding and Maritime Pact for Skills. Building upon the results of previous Blueprint projects and the knowledge and expertise of the partners, the LeaderSHIP project will design and implement secondary and tertiary training for up- and reskilling current and future workers in key areas to support the industry in meeting the needs of the twin digital and green transition. The project will deliver the current and emerging skills to reduce the carbon footprint of the industry and accelerating the use of renewable energies and new fuels and electrical power. The project will also deliver key skills for the digitalisation of the design and production processes and remote and connected maritime operations. The Project is organised in a top-down approach, it will deliver EU-level courses and qualifications and establish the mechanisms for their recognition and implementation in the different countries and companies in the partnership to facilitate workers and learners mobility. The courses will make use of innovative methodologies and technologies incl. e-learning, WBL and blended learning approaches. Rooted in the EU sectoral social dialogue between employers and workers representatives the Project aims to enlarge and strengthen the existing large-scale partnership by engaging stakeholders across EU maritime ecosystems to promote sustainable cooperation on skills mobilise resources, incentivise upskilling and reskilling actions and promote inter-company and business-education partnerships and collaboration in Europe.