The European manufacturing industry faces new challenges, which are currently not addressed by today’s products and systems. Most of the products are still in essence ‘simple’ in nature, with no capability for adapting to the consumers’ needs and no integrated methods exist for the holistic acquisition and processing of feedback information emanating from product-services. ICP4Life proposes an integrated, collaborative platform for the design, development and support of product-service systems for SMEs, equipment manufacturers and energy suppliers in order to maximize the impact in the European industry. The proposed platform comprises of three main components. The first component demonstrates a collaborative web-based application for the creation and management of products and services by engineers and designers of multiple disciplines. The second component is a Product-Service configuration tool for customers, enabling the easy and intuitive formation of Products and Services. The same component will be used for managing product related data pertaining to the manufacturer, supplier and the customer. The third component will support the efficient, adaptive and responsive planning and decision making phases, for managing the dynamic operation of the plants and the supply chain. All the components will be compatible with open standards, such as AutomationML, in order to make the most out of and accelerate the adoption by the European industry. The ICP4Life project will address the current needs of today’s manufacturers, providing faster design of modular equipment and components, the seamless collaboration of engineers across a wider network of companies as well as within a single company with disperse engineering offices and production sites and the reuse of knowledge regarding both products and processes for new projects or the configuration of existing lines. The ICP4Life consortium consists of highly skilled organizations to ensure the success of this project.

The project intends to explore the feasibility of introducing to the market a small milk steriliser unit based on a patent pending device developing high voltage (>100kV) nanopulsed electric discharge in liquids, to be used mainly by farmers selling directly their fresh dairy products through vending machines. Wider objective met by EMILK: increased nutritious food production opportunities in Europe and in developing Countries. EMILK has the potential to develop into a viable sterilisation solution suitable for use in areas without infrastructure to support the refrigerated collection of food. The European organic market is growing by approximately six percent (24 billion euros in 2013). In this scenario direct sales (e.g. from farmer to customer) weigh about 5% and it is continuously increasing since «zero km» food is perceived as higher value by final customer. The milk market is particularly interesting since raw milk is paid by industry to farmers at a very low price (0.32€/l for best quality organic milk) while final customer is often willing to pay up to 2€/l for the same product. Raw milk sterilising solutions that keep intact nutrients and organoleptic qualities, while ensuring the standards of hygiene and safety are required to enable more Europeans to enjoy raw milk. The feasibility study intends to check the attractiveness of the innovation to the market, define the opportunities both for the integration of the device in milk vending machines and for further developments, through identification of partners in the dairy industry supply chain; fine tune the business plan already drafted in this application and applying for further funding (SME instrument Phase2, local regional funding, private investments).