Good practice:

“Night of Industry 4.0 model factories” goes online due to pandemic

High share of SMEs is not open to learn the advantages that Industry 4.0 solutions can yield therefore one needs find innovative ways to raise their attention. To this end the event called “Night of Industry 4.0 model factories” was launched in 2017 with growing success from year to year. However, COVID-19 forced the event in the virtual space in 2020. Seeing this as an opportunity rather than a constraint brought even higher attendance than the previous years.
Aim of the practice is threefold: (1) raise the visibility of transforming companies for each other’s attention to facilitate future collaboration; (2) introduce the practice of digitalisation to the potential employees and also to the local community; (3) prove that digitalisation improves working environment of industrial business for white- and blue-collar workers, too. Pre-selected companies open up their shopfloors to SMEs and any other interested participants for one night all over Hungary. The online implementation includes high-quality, 360-degree camera made “virtual tours” of the shopfloors, video-aided introductions to I4.0 solutions, online knowledge library, mini-interviews, follow-up online games using social media support with trendy prizes to winners of the games.
Stakeholders include participating I4.0 model companies. IFKA non-profit Ltd and ICT-H (the No.1. digital SME association of HUN) implement the practice. Main target groups are SMEs and youngsters that are about to enter the labour market.

Cost of the online event is comparable to that of the physical one (~ EUR 200,000/event). The professional technical and promotion solutions needed to run the event smoothly (pre-recorded videos, online streaming, online and offline media promotion) offset savings from lower organisational costs.

The online event attracted somewhat higher number of both demonstration companies and visitors as the last physical event from 2019. In 2019, when the event was run physically 73 demonstration companies and 6500 visitors participated. In the online format 76 demonstration companies and approx. 7000 visitors took part, significantly higher than in the first year of the event in 2017 (25 companies, 2000 participants).

A critical selling point of the event is that people enter physically the shopfloor and gain experience in person – this was strongly challenged by the online format. To counteract this challenge the high quality virtual tours were essential.

The online format put the otherwise low entry thresholds to participation even lower, which is crucial for the easy accessibility of the event. Moreover, it became possible that participants can visit all the companies of their interest in one night let them be in distant points of the country. The online format further strengthens the fair geographic spread insofar as participation is not Budapest-focused (neither in terms of demonstration companies nor in terms of participants) but it covers the whole country. Registration and participation were very simple: visitors choose their preferred model factory on a webpage and make a simple, cost-free registration online.
In order to reach broad audience, cross-sectorial representation of participating model factories is essential. Sectors included car and machine manufacturing, furniture, packaging, electronics, food, construction, metal processing, pharmaceuticals, ICT, plastics, printing, aircrafts, sports equipment, chemicals.