After the kick-off event in Budapest the time has arrived to start the work in the Inno Provement project. The first transnational thematic meeting was held in Prague on 12-14 March 2019 where the project partners got a deeper insight to the Czech topic which was about how we can spend the public money used to support industrial R&D under I4.0 more effectively.
The agenda predicted a very interesting meeting in Prague around a topic which is useful to discuss among the project partners. As in the Inno Provement project all the partners are Managing Authorities and Intermediary Bodies all the partners looked forward to the meeting and workshop with a high interest. The event was organized by the Czech project partner, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic. The first day started with an afternoon session of Steering Committee meeting where the lead partner held a presentation about the report of the project management and the main tasks in the following period. In the second half of the first day the topic was the Regional Assessments of the project partners. By this meeting all the partners have analysed their Policy Instruments supporting Industry 4.0 in their country or region. The partners introduced the state of art to other partners which made the basis for the joint work in the project.
The second day started with the presentation of the Czech topic, the Effectiveness of public money used to support industrial R&D under I4.0. In this topic the keynote speech was held by Mr Petr Ocko, the Deputy Minister of the organizer partner. After the speech Mr Petr Porák expounded their thematic issue. Managing Authorities are always working on better and better effectiveness of their programme so it is a big challenge how we can support SMEs on the way of digitalization the most effective way. The Czech partner presented their existing system and their new multicriterial system to evaluate R&D projects. At the end of the presentation they asked the other partners to share experiences and good practices about resolving support to I4 projects, implemented evaluation criteria and assessment and measurements of each projects. The afternoon followed with the good practices of the project partners in the thematic issue.
The third day was dedicated to site visit. The partnership had the opportunity to visit the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics. Visiting the CIIRC was an interesting experience for all the partners. The National Centre for I4.0 is a good initiative which shows the commitment to digitalization. Their ongoing projects were very various and complex. It was a good opportunity to gather examples for the implementation of successful projects.
The meeting in Prague was a very good organized and fruitful opening of the cooperation in the thematic issues. The next meeting in Inno Provement project is going to be in Finland in the summer of 2019 where the partnership will learn how SMEs operating in traditional sectors can use the achievements of the digitalized world. Industry 4.0 solutions can be useful in renewing tradition industries and markets. The partnership is looking forward to the meeting in Kainuu.
