€10M funding from MISE for MADE, the competence center spearheaded by Politecnico di Milano

MADE (#MADECC), the Competence Center spearheaded by the Politecnico di Milano, has received €10,590,000 funding from the Ministry of Economic Development (MISE). It is the first Competence Center to be awarded Ministry funding, along with the Genoa National Research Council (CNR).

“To be the first to receive funding from MISE is a reward for the effort put in by all the partners to establish MADE,” commented Marco Taisch, President of MADE. “We completed all the necessary procedures as quickly as possible, as proof of the strategic value that the university places on Industry 4.0. Reconstruction work on the building which will house the Competence Center is just starting, while design of the use cases which will be used in the center is at an advanced stage.”

Here are the numbers for the MADE Competence Center, dedicated to Industry 4.0: 39 companies (technology providers, consultants, system integrators, training experts, Inail and the Universities of Bergamo, Brescia and Pavia) and approximately €22m funding over three years (almost €11m from the Ministry of Economic Development and €11m from private investors) of which €14m will be spent on equipment and personnel and €8m on applied research projects and technology transfer.

Competence Center users will have access to the latest digital technologies for the manufacturing industry. There will be 15 multi-functional islands that can be used for practical staff training or technology transfer projects. Users will be able to learn, for example, how augmented reality can be used in the design phase or to remotely support plant maintenance and they can see how collaborative robotics can help in assembly processes. Plant monitoring and data analysis using big data and cyber security technologies will be presented as solutions to reduce energy consumption and improve plant quality and performance. Finally, lean manufacturing and internal handling will be facilitators in the factory of the future.

The new centre, which will cover over 2,000m2, will be located on the Politecnico di Milano’s Bovisa-DurandoCampus and will open September 2019. The Bovisa Campus will provide a particularly favourable environment for MADE to expand, given the presence of important innovation companies such as, for example, PoliHub – the Milanese university’s accelerator which hosts 113 entrepreneurial companies – and the Joint Platform of the Politecnico di Milano and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

MADE’s medium-term objective is to reach over 10,000 people in three years by disseminating information on the potential of digital technologies, to provide more than 41,000 man hours of training and to develop more than 410 projects and 200 digital assessments involving approximately 15,000 Italian companies, 80% of which are SMEs, who will be contacted when the Competence Center opens.

MADE’s partners are Adecco, Aizoon Consulting, Alleantia, Altair, Alumotion, Beckhoff Automation, Bip, Bosch, Brembo, Cefriel, Comau, Consoft Sistemi, Csmt, Ecole, Enginsoft, Fincons,Fpt Industrial, Gi Group, Hitachi_Rail, Hyperlean, Ibm, Inail, Italtel, Kilometro Rosso, Kuka, Mbda, Parametric Technology, Politecnico Di Milano, Prima Industrie, Reply, Rf Celada, Rockwell Automation, Sap, Sei Consulting, Sew_Eurodrive, Siemens, Stm, Techedge, Tesar, Trust4value, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Whirlpool.

This release was first published 31 May 2019 by Politecnico di Milano.