Proposals are expected to address one of the following technology areas for data-driven industrial environments:

• Development of technologies and definition of specifications and standards for data, products, and/or business processes, that can be agreed and commonly used by many industrial actors, and that have the potential for the emergence of future digital value chains, identify promising industrial areas and organisational models that facilitate cooperation and collaborative product and service design among industry players facilitating industry agreements.
• Quick uptake of advanced 5G technologies by European manufacturing sector to support the convergence towards greater exploitation of industrial data and increase resilience and cybersecurity by design. Private 5G networks are exclusive mobile networks that manufacturers can use for a defined local production site. Innovative approaches to simplify the deployment and operation of such private 5G networks throughout their life cycle are needed. Implementers in industrial environments need to take a holistic view, including both the connectivity infrastructure and the actual production system. An important element for rapid deployment is also the development and evaluation of new business models for private 5G networks.

Projects should offer opportunities for new players that have their main focus on non-public (campus) networks (NGN) for connected industries and in particular automation applications.

Projects will aim at “Zero-Touch Management”, using network automation, AI / ML, Self-organizing Networks (SON), etc. and taking into account the specifics of industrial environments. Projects are encouraged to develop toolkits of open hardware, software and toolware, and qualify the use of these to provide opportunities to SMEs to further automate and digitalise their manufacturing, as well as further development on top of these Industrial Internet standards and there inherent cyber security demands for Operational Technology environment.