Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SmartEEs2 (SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEM FOR THE ADOPTION, RAMP-UP AND TRANSFER OF EMERGING ELECTRONICS SOLUTIONS)
Reporting period: 2021-07-01 to 2023-03-31
Despite significant recent progress made by the EU industry, the level of digitalisation of industry remains uneven, depending on the sector, country and company size. Facing at the same time a scattered landscape of Research, Industry and Institutional stakeholders, the efficient adoption and transformation of enabling technologies into business visions & concrete market cases remain limited. This slow diffusion of digital technologies poses a risk to the EU’s ability to compete in the global economy.
This is particularly true for Organic Large Area Electronics (OLAE) enabling technologies whose industry made significant progress recently and has established itself as a competitive growth industry. Despite proving that more and more products have matured onto the global market, the actual diffusion and efficient adoption of OLAE technologies remain limited.
Underlying reasons and key challenges are identified (cost, processes, encapsulation, scalability, yield, standards & regulations), for which major breakthroughs are needed on use, production and cost rather than on basic technology, which reflects the growing market orientation of OLAE.
To address both market & technology specific challenges, SmartEEs2 will be key role to link technology promises with real use/business cases. These cases will be implemented through a unique digitalisation experience providing experimentation, testing or support to manufacturing. SmartEEs2 will capitalize upon SmartEEs’ strong technological OLAE platform and focuss on the uptake of Flexible & Wearable Electronics (FWE) enabling use cases, where OLAE can valorize its uniqueness (flexibility, conformability) and its promises for solutions in the fast growing business of wearables and Internet of Everything.
SmartEEs2 will orchestrate a pan-EU collaboration network of Regional DIHs promoting the best quality level of digitalisation experience, hence boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall OLAE European innovation ecosystem.
This is particularly true for Organic Large Area Electronics (OLAE) enabling technologies whose industry made significant progress recently and has established itself as a competitive growth industry. Despite proving that more and more products have matured onto the global market, the actual diffusion and efficient adoption of OLAE technologies remain limited.
Underlying reasons and key challenges are identified (cost, processes, encapsulation, scalability, yield, standards & regulations), for which major breakthroughs are needed on use, production and cost rather than on basic technology, which reflects the growing market orientation of OLAE.
To address both market & technology specific challenges, SmartEEs2 will be key role to link technology promises with real use/business cases. These cases will be implemented through a unique digitalisation experience providing experimentation, testing or support to manufacturing. SmartEEs2 will capitalize upon SmartEEs’ strong technological OLAE platform and focuss on the uptake of Flexible & Wearable Electronics (FWE) enabling use cases, where OLAE can valorize its uniqueness (flexibility, conformability) and its promises for solutions in the fast growing business of wearables and Internet of Everything.
SmartEEs2 will orchestrate a pan-EU collaboration network of Regional DIHs promoting the best quality level of digitalisation experience, hence boosting the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall OLAE European innovation ecosystem.
SmartEEs2 ensured awareness and interest in the opportunities of Flexible Electronics technologies within European industry, European investors, governments and other important stakeholders
All work and results achieved in SmartEEs2 implementation (WP1-3) contributed toward the achievement of this objective. The SmartEEs2 Open Call for Application Experiments (AEs) was opened and widely publicized, the submission and selection process, and funding opportunities were explained and interested companies were encouraged to apply to the Call. All partners were engaged in a communication and outreach campaign (WP1;4-5) through a series of activities in their own countries and beyond covering:
• Production of communication material: Project Website / Association website/ SmartEEs ecosystem
• 52 events were attended and/or organized by the SmartEEs2 consortium
• 282 communication actions (Social media and journals)
• dissemination actions reached a broader audience with ~398 Impressions per post and over 111.000 people were outreached
• Five open call cut-offs carried out
• Catalogue of services
• The SmartEEs consortium promotional activities attracted 5 000 visitors on the SmartEEs ecosystem and 40 000 visitors on project website.
SmartEEs2 provided high value services in an affordable manner to help EU companies in digitalising their business thanks to FWE technologies testing, experimentation and manufacturing support: test before invest and skills development to meet ICs’ needs. Close collaboration was set between WP1, WP2-3 an WP5 in order to define, structure and implement all technical and business services inside the online marketplace.
The technical services were designed to provide support on technology testing, experimentation & manufacturing, including three types of offerings being products, prototypes and technical services.
For the sake of simplification and to help outside parties to better understand the nature of the services, the ecosystem services were integrated inside the business service category.
Also to levels of services were set and aligned with the SAE/DIH general concept,
• Services to industry: to incite, facilitate and support digital innovation of EU companies
• Services to network: to strengthen, stimulate and promote members’ activities towards third parties and innovative companies
All work and results achieved in SmartEEs2 implementation (WP1-3) contributed toward the achievement of this objective. The SmartEEs2 Open Call for Application Experiments (AEs) was opened and widely publicized, the submission and selection process, and funding opportunities were explained and interested companies were encouraged to apply to the Call. All partners were engaged in a communication and outreach campaign (WP1;4-5) through a series of activities in their own countries and beyond covering:
• Production of communication material: Project Website / Association website/ SmartEEs ecosystem
• 52 events were attended and/or organized by the SmartEEs2 consortium
• 282 communication actions (Social media and journals)
• dissemination actions reached a broader audience with ~398 Impressions per post and over 111.000 people were outreached
• Five open call cut-offs carried out
• Catalogue of services
• The SmartEEs consortium promotional activities attracted 5 000 visitors on the SmartEEs ecosystem and 40 000 visitors on project website.
SmartEEs2 provided high value services in an affordable manner to help EU companies in digitalising their business thanks to FWE technologies testing, experimentation and manufacturing support: test before invest and skills development to meet ICs’ needs. Close collaboration was set between WP1, WP2-3 an WP5 in order to define, structure and implement all technical and business services inside the online marketplace.
The technical services were designed to provide support on technology testing, experimentation & manufacturing, including three types of offerings being products, prototypes and technical services.
For the sake of simplification and to help outside parties to better understand the nature of the services, the ecosystem services were integrated inside the business service category.
Also to levels of services were set and aligned with the SAE/DIH general concept,
• Services to industry: to incite, facilitate and support digital innovation of EU companies
• Services to network: to strengthen, stimulate and promote members’ activities towards third parties and innovative companies
Building a sustainable and pan-EU network of Regional DIHs in the field of Flexible & Wearable Electronics to increase the users base. This will ensure that any business in Europe has access to a Digital Innovation Hub at ‘a working distance’, in alignment with the Digitalisation European Industry Strategy.
A strategy was set and implemented for a pan-European collaboration in the area of FWE, to enable regional ecosystems to collaborate efficiently across borders and to ensure a large coverage (sectorial, geographic) and accelerate digitisation of regional actors and economies, in line with the Digitising European Industry Strategy. Several sectors of applications with high potential were identified: Health, Mobility, Transport, Automotive, Aviation, Energy, Logistics & packaging and Agri-food.
FWEA, the ‘Flexible and Wearable Electronics Association’ created in the first year of project is now fully operational. It has a dedicated website (https://smartees.tech/). It is exploiting the marketplace developed in the project and has its legal frame to operate with nine partners of the project now members of the association. The association will now and on sustain the services developed and demonstrated (FSTP experimentation) in the project as one major achievement set by the ‘Smart Anything Everywhere’ initiative in H2020.
A strategy was set and implemented for a pan-European collaboration in the area of FWE, to enable regional ecosystems to collaborate efficiently across borders and to ensure a large coverage (sectorial, geographic) and accelerate digitisation of regional actors and economies, in line with the Digitising European Industry Strategy. Several sectors of applications with high potential were identified: Health, Mobility, Transport, Automotive, Aviation, Energy, Logistics & packaging and Agri-food.
FWEA, the ‘Flexible and Wearable Electronics Association’ created in the first year of project is now fully operational. It has a dedicated website (https://smartees.tech/). It is exploiting the marketplace developed in the project and has its legal frame to operate with nine partners of the project now members of the association. The association will now and on sustain the services developed and demonstrated (FSTP experimentation) in the project as one major achievement set by the ‘Smart Anything Everywhere’ initiative in H2020.