The MC 4.0 project is part of the overall Europe 2020 strategy, which aims to enable smart growth through the development of knowledge and innovation. The themes of Mass Customization and Tailoring are clearly reflected in the articulation of the Horizon 2020 program in the Innovation for Manufacturing section, which emphasizes that Europe needs a strategic shift from competition based on product cost to the creation of high added value, increasing the demand and the offer for greener and more customized products. This translates at the national level into consistent incentives for interventions that increase resources, skills and investments in Industry 4.0, including Mass Customization and Tailoring. In Italy, the national Industry 4.0 plan has been launched to support and incentivize companies investing in new capital goods, tangible and intangible assets functional to the technological and digital transformation of production processes. In all regions of the Italy-Austria cross-border program, SMEs are incentivized to invest in Industry 4.0 through regional structural funds. Universities themselves are making significant commitments to Industry 4.0. The University of Padua and 9 other research institutions have set up a highly specialized competence counter on Industry 4.0 issues, called SMACT, while the University of Graz and the University of Klagenfurt have joined forces to create a joint R&D program on Industry 4.0. At the level of the EUSALP macro-regional strategy, within the Action Group 2, within the first strategic objective dedicated to "Economic Growth and Innovation", the sector dedicated to Digital Industry has been added, led by Italy, with the aim of supporting the development of Industry 4.0. With this sector the MC 4.0 project intends to interact significantly.
Local bases created to increase their ability to meet the specific needs of individual customers at affordable costs (MC – Mass Customization) through digitized personalization processes (4.0), which the customer closer to the production chain of SMEs, lowering costs, speeding up the times and ensuring the quality of the product.
The digitization of the customization process goes th increasingly high-performance product configuration tools – PRODUCT CONFIGURATORS – which perform the strategic function of directly connecting customers with the company’s back office. To achieve the expected project results, more than 120 Italian and Austrian SMEs are directly involved, and it is established a partnership which represents scientific and technological knowledge (Università degli Studi di Padova – Department of Management and Engineering, Free University of Bozen, Universität Klagenfurt), needs of SMEs (Apindustria Confimi Vicenza, Fondazione Centro Produttività Veneto, Energieforum Kärnten) and industrial realities (Roen Est SpA, SelectionArts Intelligent Decision Technologies GmbH).
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