Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INEDIT (open INnovation Ecosystems for Do It Together process)
Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2023-03-31
The INEDIT project is intended to demonstrate, through its twin - digital and physical - platform, the potential innovation around social manufacturing within the circular economy in designing global while producing local. Customers can select their most favorite renewable local material (e.g. wood), tweak existing open designs or co-create innovative ones and collaboratively produce them close to their home at a neighborhood makers’ space linked to local manufacturing SMEs.
INEDIT intends to demonstrate the capacity to turn the well-known ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) approach applied by individuals, supported by the makers’ community within FabLabs, into an 'extended' / 'collaborative' approach named ‘Do It Together’ (DIT). This approach will be applied and driven by consumers within ecosystems of makers, designers and professional producers, especially SMEs, for conveying higher customer satisfaction, adoption and loyalty rates. DIT is a novel approach capitalizing on the knowledge and ideas of design and engineering coming from different disciplines and sometimes even new actors. The DIT approach will be powered by existing European innovation ecosystems for channeling the creativity of customers that shape new sustainable furniture across EU countries, while producing and delivering locally. Therefore, this project’s guiding principle is “Design Global/Customizable and Produce Local”.
INEDIT customer-centered process aims at on the one hand reconsidering the capabilities of consumers to empower them to produce their own furniture. On the other hand, it will enable industrial companies to integrate innovative approaches for machines, processes and customer-driven production into their portfolio. To achieve this new paradigm, INEDIT integrates new methods and technologies to support creativity and design in open innovation ecosystems, pushes further the access to production means through the development of new sustainable manufacturing processes integrated in agile manufacturing networks and simplifies personalization of furniture. Despite focusing on consumers, INEDIT will create respective sustainable business models profitable to all stakeholders in an environmentally responsible manner.
The main overall objectives are :
- Unleash creativity of consumers and designers towards co-creation of new pieces of furniture addressing the needs of the single user in an industrial context
- Democratize the access to production resources in the furniture sector
- Support SME operating in the furniture sector in finding new business opportunities
- Create a framework of solutions for creation, engineering and distributed production of customer-driven pieces of furniture
- Define design and manufacturing strategies focusing on lowering ecological impact and addressing societal challenges
- Create an ecosystem of all stakeholders within European
INEDIT intends to demonstrate the capacity to turn the well-known ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) approach applied by individuals, supported by the makers’ community within FabLabs, into an 'extended' / 'collaborative' approach named ‘Do It Together’ (DIT). This approach will be applied and driven by consumers within ecosystems of makers, designers and professional producers, especially SMEs, for conveying higher customer satisfaction, adoption and loyalty rates. DIT is a novel approach capitalizing on the knowledge and ideas of design and engineering coming from different disciplines and sometimes even new actors. The DIT approach will be powered by existing European innovation ecosystems for channeling the creativity of customers that shape new sustainable furniture across EU countries, while producing and delivering locally. Therefore, this project’s guiding principle is “Design Global/Customizable and Produce Local”.
INEDIT customer-centered process aims at on the one hand reconsidering the capabilities of consumers to empower them to produce their own furniture. On the other hand, it will enable industrial companies to integrate innovative approaches for machines, processes and customer-driven production into their portfolio. To achieve this new paradigm, INEDIT integrates new methods and technologies to support creativity and design in open innovation ecosystems, pushes further the access to production means through the development of new sustainable manufacturing processes integrated in agile manufacturing networks and simplifies personalization of furniture. Despite focusing on consumers, INEDIT will create respective sustainable business models profitable to all stakeholders in an environmentally responsible manner.
The main overall objectives are :
- Unleash creativity of consumers and designers towards co-creation of new pieces of furniture addressing the needs of the single user in an industrial context
- Democratize the access to production resources in the furniture sector
- Support SME operating in the furniture sector in finding new business opportunities
- Create a framework of solutions for creation, engineering and distributed production of customer-driven pieces of furniture
- Define design and manufacturing strategies focusing on lowering ecological impact and addressing societal challenges
- Create an ecosystem of all stakeholders within European
The first action of the consortium as a team was to share a common understanding and vision of the project objectives. The two objectives were: 1- to identify all the users and external stakeholders of such a new process, and 2- to start imagining users’ stories where actual consumers would require INEDIT services.
WP2 has allowed SUPSI to better define the INEDIT stakeholders’ map and initiate recruitments and interviews of external potential stakeholders made by all consortium partners.
These two tasks had the responsibility to understand the mapping of all the technologies envisaged for any step of the DIT process and for the different use-cases, and design the relevant services, based on interactions with use-case leaders, to demonstrate in the project.
In parallel, UL identifying the theoretical underpinnings of the DIT approach and describing a detailed generic process. To raise awareness of the general public, training materials have been developed by CRIT and tested.
While WP2 focuses on organisational specifications, WP3 starts exploring technologies through technological watch and feasibility tests on different technologies (scanning from mobile devices, VR for creativity and design, generative design…), start mapping technologies with the appropriate processes, and organise preliminary tests with users. Once the WP2 deliverables are ready, specific meetings are organised between WP2 and WP3 partners responsible for integration, to share the DIT vision and understand needs in terms of technologies to used and platform to be deployed.
WP4 starts to collect needs and requirements from the partners of the consortium to model the ideal OMD framework and publish a generic database, to be the common basis of each demonstrator, and a specific process description of each physical demonstrator, validated by each partner responsible of a demonstration (From the beginning of the project, we realised that different definitions were used for the same words and we agreed, within WP4 activities, to develop a glossary that was published on the INEDIT website (https://www.inedit-project.eu/glossary).
The technical specification of the integrated platform starts in Jan 2021, based on the WP2, WP3 and WP4 inputs already available. An opportunity to organise training on INEDIT process and pilot testing with students from the Ecole Supérieure du Bois (Nantes, FRANCE) mid-March 2021 convinces us to accelerate on the integration of the scanning module and creativity tool together (with versions already available at this stage).
WP5 has identified platforms with similar ideas and compared business strategies to anticipate the possible business models for the INEDIT process. Internal and external workshops have been organised to collect ideas and define the perceived value and unique selling point for such a service.
WP2 has allowed SUPSI to better define the INEDIT stakeholders’ map and initiate recruitments and interviews of external potential stakeholders made by all consortium partners.
These two tasks had the responsibility to understand the mapping of all the technologies envisaged for any step of the DIT process and for the different use-cases, and design the relevant services, based on interactions with use-case leaders, to demonstrate in the project.
In parallel, UL identifying the theoretical underpinnings of the DIT approach and describing a detailed generic process. To raise awareness of the general public, training materials have been developed by CRIT and tested.
While WP2 focuses on organisational specifications, WP3 starts exploring technologies through technological watch and feasibility tests on different technologies (scanning from mobile devices, VR for creativity and design, generative design…), start mapping technologies with the appropriate processes, and organise preliminary tests with users. Once the WP2 deliverables are ready, specific meetings are organised between WP2 and WP3 partners responsible for integration, to share the DIT vision and understand needs in terms of technologies to used and platform to be deployed.
WP4 starts to collect needs and requirements from the partners of the consortium to model the ideal OMD framework and publish a generic database, to be the common basis of each demonstrator, and a specific process description of each physical demonstrator, validated by each partner responsible of a demonstration (From the beginning of the project, we realised that different definitions were used for the same words and we agreed, within WP4 activities, to develop a glossary that was published on the INEDIT website (https://www.inedit-project.eu/glossary).
The technical specification of the integrated platform starts in Jan 2021, based on the WP2, WP3 and WP4 inputs already available. An opportunity to organise training on INEDIT process and pilot testing with students from the Ecole Supérieure du Bois (Nantes, FRANCE) mid-March 2021 convinces us to accelerate on the integration of the scanning module and creativity tool together (with versions already available at this stage).
WP5 has identified platforms with similar ideas and compared business strategies to anticipate the possible business models for the INEDIT process. Internal and external workshops have been organised to collect ideas and define the perceived value and unique selling point for such a service.
The INEDIT project aiming at raising a new customer-driven DIT process applied to the furniture sector will contribute at transforming European industry and society. INEDIT defines impact - following the UK Research Excellence Framework definition - as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia. However, we also entail that we will have other impacts as well, because we will influence the EU manufacturing landscape on different levels, by disseminating our knowledge and changing how we produce. At least we foresee the following impacts :
- Establish Open-Innovation networks for manufacturing that support customer-driven production all around Europe
- Creation of specific business models for the engineering of customized solutions, particularly for SMEs, rapid demand changes and shorter time to market
- Improvement of the co-design and co-development capabilities towards a reduction of development costs of new products and services
- Increase of product variety and personalization for higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
In other words, INEDIT seeks to clearly define the whole "Do It Together (DIT)" process process, to which will be added the creation and assembly of technology making it possible for all the stakeholders defined above.
This will enable a direct response to the impacts mentioned above and the creation of demonstrators.
At this stage of the project, INEDIT has succeeded in defining the entire "Do It Together" process in a precise manner.
- Establish Open-Innovation networks for manufacturing that support customer-driven production all around Europe
- Creation of specific business models for the engineering of customized solutions, particularly for SMEs, rapid demand changes and shorter time to market
- Improvement of the co-design and co-development capabilities towards a reduction of development costs of new products and services
- Increase of product variety and personalization for higher customer satisfaction and loyalty
In other words, INEDIT seeks to clearly define the whole "Do It Together (DIT)" process process, to which will be added the creation and assembly of technology making it possible for all the stakeholders defined above.
This will enable a direct response to the impacts mentioned above and the creation of demonstrators.
At this stage of the project, INEDIT has succeeded in defining the entire "Do It Together" process in a precise manner.