The ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) initiative was launched by the EC on July 2013 with an initial budget of 77 million Euro. During its first stage, I4MS has shown substantial success and contributed to the progressive development of European SMEs adopting advanced ICT solutions for manufacturing. The initiative has already achieved some of the main goals resulting from the interaction with SMEs through the successful launch of open calls that generated a high participation of SMEs, many of them newcomers to EU R&D funding programs. The actual stage of the projects involved in I4MS brings the need for enhanced support and specific actions towards their exploitation success and towards better leveraging the European Manufacturing Sector through the implementation of ICT solutions within the Manufacturing SMEs. Four additional projects have joined the initiative, these projects will need to integrate in the initiative and have same services of support as the projects included in the first phase of I4MS, such as open calls support, etc… For this purpose, I4MS-Growth has designed different strategies that will among others: • Renew the I4MS Portal with improved areas for providing information of interest to: regional entities, competence centers, SMEs, etc… • Enable the interchange of synergies between IPs and IAs involved in the initiative • Support the interaction with the I4MS Competence Centre Network; • Continue to promote and support the involvement of SMEs in the new launch of open calls for IAs; • Reinforce the brand and image of the Competence Centers Network of Excellence as well as their interaction with innovation hubs; • Facilitate the dissemination of the experiments for a future replication and implementation of the I4MS scheme within the regions; • Position the I4MS initiative as one of the key initiatives in Europe for the Manufacturing and ICT sector. • Administrative management of innovation hubs.

The EC communication “Digitising European Industry: Reaping the full benefits of a Digital Single Market” aims to reinforce the EU's competitiveness in digital technologies and to ensure that every industry in Europe, in whichever sector, wherever situated, and no matter of what size can fully benefit from digital innovations. In the H2020 LEIT ICT WP2018-2020, the section “Platforms and Pilots” is launching the six calls (DT-ICT-07 to DT-ICT-12) for implementing next generation Digital Platforms in four basic industrial domains: Manufacturing, Agriculture (and Rural Areas), Energy (and Smart Homes / Grids) and Healthcare (Smart Hospitals). Moreover, outside of the specific suggested Digital Transformation (DT) topics, the development of EU Digital Industrial Platforms (a battle Europe cannot afford to lose) is a key priority also e.g. in Smart Systems (Smart Anything Everywhere SAE), Robotics, Photonics and Process Industry (SPIRE2030) domains. The OPEN DEI proposal aims at leveraging synergies, identifying gaps, sharing best practices, reinforcing regional/national relationships as well as putting in place the necessary joint measures to implement common dissemination, communication, training and exploitation action plans among the Innovation Actions implementing the EU DT strategy. OPEN DEI is structured around twelve coordinated and complementary objectives grouped in four main action lines: in Platform Building a reference architecture, a set of open source reference implementations and an Industrial Data Platform; in Large Scale Piloting a digital maturity model, a set of assessment methods and a migration journey benchmarking tool; in Ecosystem Building an Innovation and Collaboration Platform, a pan-EU network of Industrial DIHs, an Industrial Skills catalogue and observatory; in Standardisation a cross-domain survey, a promotion and implementation plan and a strategic alliance with existing EU and International SDOs.