Good practice:

Incentives for the creation of highly specialized competence centres on I4.0 in Italy

This measure promotes the establishment of highly specialized competence centres on I4.0 issues in the form of public-private partnerships with the aim to support the introduction of digital technologies into the supply chain management and logistics process of Italian industries.
The competence centres will have to carry out business guidance and training activities as well as support in the implementation of innovation and R&D projects. The project aims at the realization, by the beneficiary companies, of new products, processes or services using advanced technologies aligned with I4.0 technologies.
Core objectives are:
• Guidance to enterprises, especially SMEs, through the preparation of a series of tools aimed at supporting companies in assessing their level of technological maturity.
• Training for companies, to promote and disseminate skills in I4.0 through class-training, on-the-job training on the production line or on real applications.
• Industrial research and development projects in I4.0, aiming to foster the demand for innovation by companies.
• Enhance existing realities and actions at local level to reinforce and consolidate the structures responsible of technology transfer, trying to avoid the fragmentation/dispersion of resources.
These Competence Centers will be entitled to publish specific calls with goals linked to I4.0 technologies and will have to make available competences, specific know-how and services for the implementation of the projects

Resources available: 73,46 million euro: 65% (47,5 million) for the creation of the centers; 35% (25,5 million) for innovative I4.0 projects for a maximum amount per project of 200kEuro.

Evidence of success can be seen by the effective constitution of 8 high competence centres:
• Artes 4.0 (Scuola superiore Sant’anna),
• Competence Industry Manufacturing 4.0 – CIM 4.0 (Politecnico di Torino),
• Made in Italy 4.0 - MADE (Politecnico di Milano),
• BI-REX (Università di Bologna).
• Smact (Università di Padova),
• Industry 4.0 - medITech (Università di Napoli Federico II)
• Start 4.0 (Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche, Cnr),
• Cyber 4.0 (Università La Sapienza di Roma)

Due to some formal requirements stated in the call for proposal, it was difficult for some stakeholders to become a founding member of the competence centres. The solution adopted by some interested parties (research centres and actors with competences in I4.0) was to become “supporting” members.

The practice can be of interest for many other countries that want to improve the cooperation between enterprises and research centres. The dialogue between the two parts is extremely important for increasing the competitiveness of the industry on the global market.
The practice also represents an example of an instrument able to facilitate the technological improvement of companies with a financial support with few bureaucratic constraints, in particular for SMEs.
It can easily boost the industry economic development process that, nowadays, needs to be encouraged, in particular for I4.0 issues.