EIT Digital begins MIDIH initiative
EIT Digital, along with 20 partners, has begun the Manufacturing Industry Digital Innovation Hub (MIDIH) initiative.
Funded by Horizon 2020 within the Factories of Future cPPP and I4MS programmes, MIDIH aims to support and link national and local initiatives for the digitisation of manufacturing industry, to boost investment and collaborations through strategic partnership and networking.
The initiative aims to encourage innovation partnerships between solution providers and industrie, as well as bring Europe to the forefront of the Industry 4.0 market by 2023.
By supporting companies in their digitalisation travel, Digital Innovation Hubs are crucial ingredient of the Digitising European Industry (DEI) initiative.
Digital Innovation Hubs have already proven their effectiveness, the concept finding its limits only in the available technical skills and the difficulty to scale business beyond regional/national borders.
MIDIH will connect operating Digital Innovation Hubs focusing on CPS and IoT into a pan-European network capable of more effectively addressing the needs of European industry, notably SMEs and midcaps.
Fabio Pianesi, head of external collaboration at EIT Digital said: “In order to play a major role in the digitisation of European manufacturing industry, European SMEs and midcaps need to be able to access a pallet of services in a unified manner … By pooling together existing Digital Innovation Hubs, Competence Centres and Teaching Factories across Europe and joining forces with major industrial players and platform providers, MIDIH will incubate a pan-European network acting as a ‘one stop shop’ of services allowing SMEs and midcap to successfully meet the challenges of digital transformation.”
Recent studies estimate that digitisation of products and of the manufacturing process can add more than €110bn of annual revenue in Europe in the next five years.
