The main goal for the years to come is the transformation of EIT Manufacturing into a well-regarded service organisation offering qualified services to the European Manufacturing domain. This transformation will include all parts of the organisation; the pillars, the CLCs and the Manufacturing SASU. An extensive catalogue of possible service offerings has been established and prioritised. The first results have been achieved already. According to our go-to-market strategy, services will be piloted by the CLCs or the Manufacturing SASU and, if successful, rolled out over the whole organisation. The first portfolio of start-ups with financial sustainability agreements has been established, with an estimated valuation of more than €2 million. EIT Manufacturing will focus its investment in the next three years on the “European Manufacturing System”, taking an integrated European approach of all pillars: Innovation, Education, RIS, Business Creation and Communication. The “European Manufacturing System” will play a key role in the Circular Economy. It will link the steps of value creation processes in a multidimensional way, in order to identify the environmentally, economically and socially sustainable favourable alternatives for each step, going from an idea to a finished product, process or service. With Europe’s sensitivity for sustainability, and its ingenious talents in developing innovative technologies, processes and means of collaboration, Europeans are destined to lead the way to further evolved and improved Manufacturing Systems. EIT Manufacturing, in cooperation with its partners and ecosystem, helps drive this leadership by postulating the “European Manufacturing System” as a strategic objective for the European manufacturing industry, with global implications. The Business Plan implementation will fully comply with the EIT Financial Sustainability principles, KIC fund principles, Innovation Principles, EIT RIS Hub Minimum Standards and Good Governance principles.

RENEE envisions flexible remanufacturing using AI and advanced robotics for circular value chains in EU industry. The objective of RENEE is to implement human-centric production systems relying on advanced robotics and AI to accommodate the remanufacturing of diverse states of used products. Additionally, RENEE will accelerate the workforce upskilling/reskilling by deploying a remanufacturing educational platform and a set of operator support technologies. RENEE follows a holistic approach providing product, process and resource-level enablers for remanufacturing applications including: - Circular value chains configuration toolbox: Including software solutions for product state diagnosis and classification, methods for product ‘design for remanufacturability’, Digital Product Passport, and for remanufacturing value chain configuration and planning. - Digital infrastructure for remanufacturing management: including a) tools for the planning and orchestration of flexible remanufacturing systems, b) deployment of Digital Twins customized for the remanufacturing process, and c) tools to enable product traceability and efficient management of the remanufacturing supplier network. - Robot skills & flexible production modules for remanufacturing: Enabling the resource level autonomy for remanufacturing through the deployment of dedicated robot skills libraries, AI methods for decision-support and process optimization as well as advanced robotics integrated in hybrid production specialized in remanufacturing, - Upskilling/reskilling the workforce for remanufacturing: Supporting operators both during the remanufacturing tasks via inclusive interfaces as well as providing the infrastructure (Educational platform) and required material (courses) for training them to meet the requirements of diversified remanufacturing operations. The RENEE modules will be validated in 4 pilots from the household appliances (refrigerators), robotics, and mobility (electrical motors and bikes) sectors

Covid-19 has shown that unpredictable events can disrupt supply chains, demand, and induce work restrictions, which can be detrimental to the manufacturing sector, significantly affecting growth. Especially, when medium or high-volume manufacturing is considered, resilience can only be achieved through rapid reconfigurability and digitalization. Rapid reconfigurability must be addressed in all production levels, ranging from the factory to the machinery and to each individual process step, as well as the interaction with the supply chain. The objective of R3GROUP is to develop and demonstrate resilience strategies for reconfiguration. The project will carry out industrial demonstrators in diverse manufacturing sectors (automotive, fabricated metal products, rubber and plastics, wearing apparel, home appliances) facing various reconfiguration issues (scale up or down, introduction of new suppliers, accommodation of multiple product variants, resilience to unforeseen events), engaging end-users operating with different business models (B2B, B2C) and on different positions in the value chain (OEM, Tier 1). R3GROUP will follow the 6 reconfigurability principles to develop technologies in 5 pillars towards resilience through reconfigurability: i) release an AAS-enabled platform for horizontal and vertical integrability for reconfigurability; ii) develop production tools and technologies, through the reconfigurable machine tool concept; iii) deploy a digital toolkit supporting rapid evaluation of reconfiguration impacts, using multi-level digital twins; iv) integrate innovative tools to capture the trigger for reconfiguration that provide awareness on the status of the rest of the value chain (supply chain, market); v) multi-level monitoring, control, and quality assessment to mitigate the reconfiguration impact. Finally, R3GROUP will develop human-centred solutions and put special focus on reskilling to support the adoption of novel technologies.