News

After the approval of the 2019 Action Plan during the Network Representatives’ Meeting, which took place in Brussels on February 20th, the Pilot activities started immediately to boost progress according to the plan. In particular, on 14th March the first ESM Steering Committee of 2019 was organised with the main goal of planning activities in detail and start the process for including a new region in the coordination. As a first step, it was decided that the Steering Committee will evaluate eventual applications of regions that are already represented in the Steering Committee, in order to guarantee immediate contribution of the new co-leading region. In case no application will be received, the call will be extended to other regions participating in the Pilot. A second Steering Committee to follow-up this issue is scheduled on April 8th.

In December 2018, the ESM Pilot held a plenary meeting in Brussels, hosted by the Lombardy Region. The meeting delivered the state of the art of the ESM Pilot, showing the progress of demo-cases and highlighting the challenges for 2019. During 2018, actions were mainly addressed to boost the progress of demo-cases, identify and establish interlinks among them, as well as to position the ESM Pilot in the EU-framework to increase awareness around it in the industrial and innovation community. The priorities of the Pilot in 2019 include:

• Implementation and funding for pilot plants according to demo-cases’ business plans
• Concrete progress of demo-cases and identification of synergies
• Positioning with respect to digital EU initiatives
• Optimisation of activities within S3Platform
• Establishment of new demo-cases (i.e. food manufacturing)
• Improvement of ESM Pilot outreach through targeted communication actions

ESM Pilot started 2019 at full speed
After the approval of the 2019 Action Plan during the Network Representatives’ Meeting, which took place in Brussels on February 20th, the Pilot activities started immediately to boost progress according to the plan. In particular, on 14th March the first ESM Steering Committee of 2019 was organised with the main goal of planning activities in detail and start the process for including a new region in the coordination. As a first step, it was decided that the Steering Committee will evaluate eventual applications of regions that are already represented in the Steering Committee, in order to guarantee immediate contribution of the new co-leading region. In case no application will be received, the call will be extended to other regions participating in the Pilot. A second Steering Committee to follow-up this issue is scheduled on April 8th.

Below is a summary of meetings and events in which representatives from the ESM is involved in:

• “De-and Remanufacturing” demo-case, together with Pilot leads, met DG REGIO on 2nd April in Brussels to discuss the state of the art of the interregional pilot action and the next steps and activities planned for 2019.
• “Polymer-based Functional Products” demo-case will participate to the workshops and matchmaking event organised by the Interreg MED project GREENOMED in Barcelona on 11th April 2019. Representatives of the “EFREFO” demo case will participate in some virtual sessions too, in order to investigate possible synergies expansion opportunities. The day after the event, EURECAT will open its Smart Plastic Laboratory in Cerdanyola, which is supposed to become the Catalan node of this ESM demo-case network.
• Representatives of the “Digital Transformation” demo-case took part in the sixth meeting of the Working Group on Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) in Brussels on 3rd April 2019. The goal of the meeting was to stimulate discussions to rationalise platforms and marketplaces developed by DIH related projects. The participation to such discussions will be useful for the demo case in order to define a complementary and synergic positioning in the frame of European digital initiatives. Moreover, at the Lombardy regional level, the JRC of Ispra, invited regional representatives, the AFIL Cluster and its regional Working Group on “Digital and Virtual Factory” to a bilateral meeting focused on Artificial Intelligence. This is a good opportunity for the demo case to identify possible collaborations with the JRC to boost its progress.