INDUSTRY 4.0: DIGITIZING THE CUSTOMERS EXPERIENCE – A NEW AND ENHANCED RELATION WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

The aim of the L-DIH is to contribute to the development of a data-driven innovation strategy in Luxembourg by accelerating the integration of digital technologies by industry in line with objectives of the EU’s Digitising European Industry and Digital Europe Programme. The technology focus is on HPC, cybersecurity and, to a less advanced degree, AI.

The L-DIH acts as a national platform bringing together offer and demand related to the digital transformation of industry, in particular SMEs, by facilitating collaborations between:

• Companies with a need to access digitalisation skills, technologies, services and related support mechanisms,
• Public and private solution providers with an interest in showcasing digitalisation skills, technologies and services that they can provide to meet the needs of industry.

The L-DIH aims to operate as the nationally representative digital innovation hub with the intention to federate all national stakeholders under a single umbrella, providing access to expertise and testing facilities across the EU.

The L-DIH is composed of a central hub hosted by the Luxembourg national innovation agency (Luxinnovation) and 5 core institutional partners: FEDIL – The Voice of Luxembourg’s industry, the Luxembourg Chamber de Commerce, the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), the National Research Fund (FNR) and the University of Luxembourg.

Services

The L-DIH offers support and deployment services to cover the 4 main functions of a European DIH: Test before invest

• Awareness raising
• Digital maturity assessment
• Demonstration activities and visioning for digital transformation
• Fostering integration, adaptation and customisation of various technologies, testing and experimenting
• Knowledge and technology transfer

Skills and training The L-DIH partners enhance knowledge transmission between the academic and the business world via continuous education and lifelong learning.

• Hosting or providing of training, boot-camps, traineeships via partnerships with public and private institutions and permanent interactions with the professional world
• Short-term advanced digital skills training courses. The L-DIH partners are constantly developing ICT training programmes and partnerships following the framework given by the Digital Europe Programme.

Support to find investments The L-DIH can draw on the in-house expertise of Luxinnovation, whose mission also consists of:

• Supporting large industries as well as SMEs and start-ups to find investors by facilitating access to national and European financial institutions
• Supporting all national companies with building their projects and partnerships in order to present the best possible application for national and European RDI funding programmes
• Offering support to companies, RTOs and the University to join consortia active in DIH-related funded project and Industry 4.0 in particular
• Bringing research and industry together, through facilitating R&D partnerships. The FNR proposes a wide range of funding instruments specifically aimed at fostering collaboration between research and business, as well supporting knowledge transfer and getting prototypes ready for investment. FNR also awards a block allocation of PhD and/or Postdoc grants. Their expertise and funding programs will be key.

Innovation ecosystem and networking opportunities The L-DIH can build on a very strong network in the industry and innovation ecosystem:

• FEDIL, Luxembourg’s industry federation with over 600 members, is a major networking platform for industrialists and Industry 4.0 initiatives. It support its members during their decision-making process and development towards the future, taking into account the national and international context as well as upcoming new regulations and opportunities.
• The Chamber of Commerce and its 90,000 affiliates is a largest network in Luxembourg. As host institution of the EEN network in Luxembourg, its expertise in outreach programmes for SMEs and matchmaking and brokerage events will be used to further extend to services of the L-DIH.
• The Luxembourg Cluster Initiative managed by Luxinnovation covers six priority sectors for the country’s economic development. The cluster managers provides individual support to companies of their sector, including an analysis that helps to propose relevant services – including DIH services – for each company. The cluster managers foster the creation of partnerships between stakeholders of the same value chains, on the national level but also in the Greater Region. The extension to other regions is already supported by informal links that exist between clusters across the border.
• Additionally, Luxinnovation’s Market Intelligence team has already mapped several sectors of the economy to identify all companies active in that sector and analyse the value chains. These mappings offer an important overview of the existing stakeholders, but also of the main gaps in the value chains. The mappings produced on cybersecurity and those foreseen on Industry 4.0 and the HPC/AI/DATA value chains are particularly relevant for the L-DIH.

Additional information

With regard to the expectations of the European Commission, the L-DIH partnership includes:

• An RTO (LIST) and the University covering the technology side
• Luxinnovation covering relationships with companies and their innovation and digitalisation projects
• The Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, covering all sectors of business other than agriculture and crafts, coordinates the EEN
• FEDIL, the industry federation, representing the strategic interest of manufacturing companies in Luxembourg seeking digital transformation and Industry 4.0 levels of functioning and production.
• The FNR, the main funder of research activities in Luxembourg.