EU project supports manufacturing SMEs
Digitization is changing retail and communication platforms in manufacturing: Under the leadership of Salzburg Research, the H2020 research project NIMBLE is developing an IoT-capable B2B collaboration system for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Europe. The system will support the search for supply chain partners, delivery logistics and inter-company workflows through secure business-to-business and machine-to-machine information exchange channels.
Large industrial companies in the semiconductor, avionics or automotive industries have already reached high levels of digitization and are acting as “trailblazers”. The vast majority of industrial companies, however, are small and medium-sized enterprises in traditional sectors. These companies are at risk of being thwarted by the increasingly digitalized and connected market. Even today it is difficult to be clearly visible on the WWW in order to benefit from it as an SME. Many companies therefore rely on large platforms and pay significant amounts for their visibility.
The European research project NIMBLE wants to help these innovative industrial companies: A digital trading and communication platform should help to modernize their processes. To this end, NIMBLE develops an open-source-based B2B platform infrastructure that can be specialized by operators for regional or sector-specific B2B solutions. Using these platforms, SMEs can define supply chains and even network production logistics in order to leverage company-wide optimization potential.
Collaboration along the supply chain, already during the design process and for product variations: Both integrated industry partners and numerous early adopters should benefit from the NIMBLE platform. For all users, time and cost savings are expected through innovative services, faster response to market changes, customer feedback, better responsiveness to problems, etc. Through real-time process optimization, automation and data sharing, the value added of all those involved can be increased.
The project’s technical challenges include ensuring the security of operational data, extensibility of platform functionality, and ensuring interoperability between various NIMBLE-based platforms.
