CG FITMANovationLab (FML)
In order to exploit the results of the FITMAN project and continue to support organisations in the use of FITMAN’s assets, FITMAN has set up the FML, now branded as FIWARE for Industry, with support for operation at regional and EU level.
The FML has been set up in agreement with I-VLab Board of Directors as a Community Group and received the final approval of the business plan and operations in September 2015.
FML will leverage four types of activities that will support that FML member could in turn implement specific commercial services that will in turn contribute to the sustainability of the FML operations. FML activities will be organised as:
- Communication, marketing and community expansion services.
- Awareness, training and education services.
- Assets evolution, validation and testing services (FIWARE for Industry Portal & Catalogue).
- Contests, awards and challenges services (FIWARE for Industry EU Challenges).
These activities and services will be offered through the FML portal. These activities will allow that FML partners could in turn set up commercial services, in particular:
- Consultancy and Training projects (Academy).
- Trials replication / expansion projects (Showcases).
- Open Source implementation projects of added value services (Lab)
- System Integration projects (Lab)
- FIWARE tools & services marketplaces (Hub)
The process of defining and refining an operational structure suitable for FML has revealed important lessons to the consortium and the future sustainability of the activities:
- FML activities should strongly connect with regional development policies.
- Growth strategy should rely on the evolution from a pure digital ecosystem towards a cyber-physical ecosystem that connects FML with trusted and reference industrial infrastructures.
- FITMAN added value lies on two aspects:
- FIWARE enabled services and applications can extend solid and well established digital platforms already deployed by industry.
- FIWARE is of high value for decision making in digital transformation. Manufacturing industry values the availability of modular, flexible, extendible frameworks such as FIWARE that could build on legacy systems and allow the fast, low-cost prototyping of innovative digital processes in collaboration with ICT industries & supply chains
- FML value proposition is that it will play a crucial role in finding & operating the best digital service for a manufacturing process, with a specialisation on FIWARE assets, so that ICT industry can offer FIWARE enabled ICT services and manufacturing industry could implement FIWARE enabled innovation processes and operate FIWARE enabled digital manufacturing processes.
This value proposition is well in line with the service and application marketplace that FIWARE is planning for the final development phase of its ecosystem. Moreover, FML is in a privileged position to support domain technical committee of the FIWARE community in the industrial domain as well as being actively contributing to the incubation of new GEs from the most suitable SEs offer.
More information on the FML website.