
Co-funded by the H2020 programme of the European Union.
Project Budget: € 7,346,738.75
AFIL Budget: € 100.000,00
Interval: 12/2020 – 11/2022
Project Website: n.a
Internal Contacts: Marzia Morgantini – Roberta Curiazzi
Eur3ka will Fight Pandemic with a Manufacturing Network
Eur3ka project is a major research and innovation effort focused on helping the manufacturing and health care industries respond quickly and efficiently to current and future major medical crises.
The project, coordinated by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, is part of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and brings together 24 partners of excellence from 11 countries to improve global emergency preparedness.
AFIL is a key partner in this project, that together with the other Lombardy organisations (Politecnico di Milano, Intellimech and Engineering) will strongly contribute in project dissemination in the territory.
Global and fair access to medical supplies
The global economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic in general but also in particular for the manufacturing sector has been tremendous. At the same time, the manufacturing sector has been a critical part in the response to the crisis. However, the manufacturing sector was not fit enough for this purpose and had to go through an unprecedented collaboration effort to meet this tremendous challenge. Eur3ka will facilitate the framework, knowledge and technological assets so European governments and industry can carry out smart investments in more resilient manufacturing networks that can be quickly repurposed. Such manufacturing networks will prevent us from repeating the current situation and will successfully and globally cope in a coordinated manner with peaks of demand associated with outbreaks such as COVID-19.
The Eur3ka Consortium is committed to develop a resilient global outbreak response and repurpose data ecosystem space for shared emergencies, that is digital oriented and regulation based. While trust is established at organizational and technical levels, the Eur3ka ecosystem will accelerate coordinated efforts and will keep growing building on top of key principles such as transparency, accountability, sovereignty, inclusivity, scalability, and empowerment of all existing and future networks and stakeholders active in the field at a worldwide level.
Eur3ka aims to develop a trusted federation of European and global manufacturing resources for health care. The work is expected to generate improvements in health care industry preparedness, including 3D printing initiatives and industrial additive manufacturing services networks. Traditional factories will be able to implement the most appropriate strategies for repurposing their production lines to achieve increases in capacity for producing vital PPE and other medical supplies to meet demand.
Eur3ka will enable global and fair access to:
- a Plug & Respond (P&R) repurposing resource coordination framework for assuring busines continuity and effectiveness in pandemic crisis response;
- a common open standardized modular manufacturing reference architecture and solutions;
- top digitally sovereign cross-sectorial manufacturing networks and capacities.
Eur3ka will therefore create the basis for linking global manufacturing capacities, supply chains and medical knowledge according to demand and realigning them in the shortest possible time. The “as-a-service concept”, fair intellectual property management and the need of clear and shared certification processes and guidelines are among the driving principles of the Eur3ka project.
Connect regional production ecosystems to transform production
- The project will draw on the latest achievements from research and development in these areas:
- Industry 4.0 standards, open automation modular manufacturing production line enablers.
- Industrial international common data space enablers and digital infrastructures.
- Global on-demand and manufacturing-as-a-service platforms.
- Connected and smarter supply networks, and global medical supplies and equipment repositories.
- A vibrant European and global network of manufacturing DIH network innovation services and open experimental facilities.
EUR3KA has received funding from the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement Nº 101016175.