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Call for Proposals: Data Space for Manufacturing (Deployment)

Deadline: 29-May-24

The European Commission (EC) has announced a call for proposals to significantly scale up the deployment and use of the data space(s) for manufacturing by reaching a critical mass of manufacturing industries sharing industrial data and improving company operations and value chains among providers.

In addition, the action aims to support data-driven transition to a greener and circular economy, also by enabling new business models, for example, those based on a Manufacturing-As-A-Service (MaaS) approach and Extended Reality for industrial virtual worlds. The action will also contribute to the implementation of measures that accelerate the twin green and digital transition of manufacturing industries, such as the proposed Net Zero Industry Act10 as part of the Green Deal Industrial Plan.

Scope 

  • As the manufacturing sector is diverse and complex, the action specifically focuses on data spaces addressing management of supply chains. Proposal(s) for this action need to target one of the following two use cases:
    • Data-driven models for supply chain management and the role of data sharing in risk mitigation response, such as early-warning predictive material shortage. Awarded proposal(s) will perform agile supply chain management and execution by continuously monitoring and exchanging status data on e.g. purchase orders, sales orders, inventory levels, order progress, demand and other forecasts, raw materials, chemicals and energy use and supply, etc. across segments of the value chain.
    • Manufacturing data spaces using data to drive the transition to a greener and circular economy with enhanced business opportunities for industrial data value added services. End users are machine users, machine vendors, maintenance service providers, and remanufacturers.
  • The data spaces will specifically enable the compliance with standards and norms, including environmental requirements, product passports, and tax regimes.
  • The awarded proposal(s) should implement a secure, fair and trustworthy way of making data available and usable between actors throughout the value chain of the product lifecycle on the basis of voluntary agreements, in view of completing, deepening and expanding data sharing with other organisations. The implementation will need to be Data Act-compliant.
  • In addition, the proposal(s) for this action need to address the following mandatory activities:
    • Bringing together relevant stakeholders to conclude data agreement(s) with reference to design, reuse, recycling, and environmental impact and indicators for continuous monitoring and exchange of data on product performance and reuse, material content and origin, feedback to design, product recycling, product remanufacturing, etc. Carrying out further activities to effectively track and report resource use (e.g. CO2) from a manufacturer’s perspective. Actions should preferably target data sharing for circularity in line with the Circular Economy Action plan (COM(2020) 98 final).
  • The action shall build on the results and recommendations of the preparatory actions under the previous WP. To ensure a balanced portfolio covering all envisaged data spaces for manufacturing, grants will be awarded to proposals not only in order of ranking but also to at least one proposal per expected use case, provided that the applications attain all thresholds. Furthermore, there should be cooperation with the European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) for broad uptake by industry as well as the Testing and Experimentation Facility (TEF) for Manufacturing to define European test and training data sets and to provide support in their establishment.
  • The awarded proposal(s) will use, where possible and when available, the smart cloud-to-edge middleware platform Simpl12. They will also work in close partnership with the Data Spaces Support Centre to ensure alignment and interoperability with the rest of the ecosystem of data spaces implemented with the support of Digital Europe Programme, in particular in view of a data spaces reference architecture; common building blocks, toolboxes and standards; and data governance models. Right from the outset, the awarded proposal(s) is/are expected to work towards achieving economic and/or financial sustainability by the conclusion of the action.
  • The active participation of industry in both roles as data providers and data users is recommended, with a focus to ease the deployment of such data spaces linked to business usage. Tools to automate the deployment and configuration of data spaces are expected in order to accelerate adoption rates and a stronger sense of ownership of data providers and users by the end of the projects’ runtime.

Funding Information

  • Data Space for Manufacturing (deployment): between EUR 3 000 000 and EUR 4 000 000 per project
  • Data Space for Manufacturing (deployment): between 24- 36 months

Outcomes and Deliverables

  • The awarded proposal(s) will set up and deploy data space(s) for manufacturing at scale, which will stay available after the runtime of the project, delivering industrial data sharing among manufacturing companies and service providers. The solutions must be characterized by a high degree of user-orientation in terms of trustworthiness, data sovereignty of the companies and manageability.
  • More specifically, awarded proposal(s) will need to deliver:
    • Technical infrastructure for the deployment of the Common European Manufacturing Data Space(s).
    • Data governance documentation, comprising a set of rules of legislative, administrative, and contractual nature covering access rights, processing, using and sharing data in a trustful and transparent manner.
    • Code of conduct and contract template.
    • Guidance/training documents for the stakeholders willing to join the data space(s).
    • Once the data space(s) is/are deployed: quarterly and on an ad hoc basis reporting on usage, problems detected, and solutions provided.

KPIs to measure Outcomes and Deliverables 

  • To measure outcomes, the proposals in this action will identify specific KPIs in the following areas:
    • Business: increase of organisations participating in the Data Space, their geographical distribution and return on investment.
    • Technical: volume, quality and value of data exchanged; analysis of data actually used by several stakeholders in the value chain.
    • Deployment: share of supplier/customer interaction having undergone automation, share of SMEs among data providers and data users.
  • The consortium should also propose relevant indicators (including industry and service relevant KPIs) for measuring the expansion of usage of the data space.
  • Indicators should be accompanied by target values.

Targeted Stakeholders 

  • All entities, with a focus on manufacturing SMEs and mid-caps, machine-tool industry, IT companies and integrators and related industry associations. The consortium will include at least suppliers and users as well as service providers, any other organisation (such as data brokers, data stewards, data integrators) participating in data interoperability activities and organisations.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Only the following countries are eligible: EU Member States, EEA countries and countries associated to the Digital Europe Programme. Entities must not be directly or indirectly controlled from a country that is not an eligible country unless the granting authority agrees to allow for exceptional participation on the basis of a guarantee.

For more information, visit European Commission.