Business models for flexible and delocalised approaches for intensified processing

Date de clôture : 21 janv. 2016  
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Topic Description

The competitiveness of European manufacturing depends on producing differentiated and high added value products in an efficient and sustainable manner, with reduced production costs, increased product quality and minimised time to market. To create a long-lasting competitive advantage for the European process industry it is also needed to properly inter-relate the production with modern and innovative ways of doing business.

Therefore, technological innovation in sustainable manufacturing in the process industry needs to be matched with new business models, which may support industry and cross-sector clusters as well as industrial parks, while also allowing more flexible and delocalised operations. These new business models should be designed to address the barriers which have so far prevented regionally or locally adapted solutions, with an emphasis on technical but also non-technological barriers, such as legal, regulatory or cultural ones.

On the other hand, these new business models should allow the positive interactions between the different actors (firms, neighbouring municipalities, infrastructure administrations), which can allow positive outcomes in terms of accrued economic value associated with perceived level of attractiveness to inward investors, leading to jobs creation, and sustainable development promotion by local authorities, industries and policy makers. In addition, these business models should consider the influence of industrial consumer trends on future energy and resource systems to achieve ambitious sustainability paths, which will be very relevant for the whole market.

New business solutions should enable higher throughput operations and allowing industry to produce in a distributed and small scale manner; these new business models are expected to be more flexible and demand-driven. Site re-optimization studies will help identifying barriers towards good practice solutions and integrating several industries or processes.

Activities should focus on all of the following areas:

• To determine the spatial flexibility parameters which allow to optimise activities interdependence and to define the resource flexibility parameters which allow optimising yearly fluxes between companies
• Integrated business model solutions for customer-driven supply chain management based on intensified processing.
• To deliver design constraints for new decentralised locations, which would position them, if applied, in the industrial symbiosis category,
• To pinpoint the routes which allow the reduction of carbon footprint at affordable interdependence investments
• Scenarios for novel distributed and intensified processing, sourcing and design solutions linking individual "home-based" designers and manufacturers to the supply-chain, promoting social inclusion and deploying skills locally available.
• Scenarios for local sourcing and supply, thus reducing the environmental footprint, taking into account both raw material and energy sources

The proposals are expected to include an evaluation of best use and practical cases for intensified processing, while also providing an understanding on the research needs to achieve rapid deployment of the novel business solutions in particular consumer-targeted domains and a roadmap for their implementation. All relevant supply-chain stakeholders should be considered (including representatives from socio-economic sciences) and it is expected that SMEs will play an important role in the deployment and application of future business models.

The needs of SMEs as part of the supply-chain should be addressed.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU between EUR 250000 and 500000 would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

No more than one action will be funded.

A study on the research needs to develop new business model solutions that can support the return of delocalised manufacturing to Europe, in the order of at least 5% of the total manufacturing capacity, in the process industry sectors, within 5 years after the end of the study.

The overall aim is to obtain an understanding of how to achieve in the medium term new business model solutions which should provide:

• Reduction in the environmental footprint compared to products produced in the traditional value chains by 10% through less stock, less waste, and less transportation;
• Reduction of raw material by 15% through the creation of strong networks with related sources of raw material coming from different sources (primary and secondary) locally
• Development of scenarios in order to identify the proper locations and opportunities associated to delocalised facilitates taking into account legal and social hampering factors
• Increased business opportunities on a local scale.
• More involvement of customers/users in the integrated innovative business model solutions.