STANDARDISATION MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

On July 20^th, UNI, the Italian Standardization Body partner of RECLAIM, organized the online workshop “Boosting research results through standardisation: the Foresee Cluster experience” to explain the link between standardization and innovation, showcasing the activities and the results obtained in R&I projects included in the ForeSee cluster.

The ForeSee Cluster consists indeed of eleven EU H2020 funded projects, in the field of novel design and predictive maintenance technologies for increased operating life of production systems. RECLAIM is one of these 11 projects.

The workshop was attended by around 40 people from companies, laboratories, universities, research centers and consulting firms. It is worth noticing that several standardisation bodies were involved in the organization of the workshop: CEN – European Committee for Standardization; ASI – Austrian Standards International as partner of the project Level-Up; and UNI the Italian Standardization Body as partner of RECLAIM.

The workshop has been divided in three parts. A first presentation by CEN to highlight the main links between standardization and research: more in detail, which are the instruments and the potential benefits from policy makers, companies and consortia perspectives. The second part has been dedicated to illustrate the standardization activities carried out within 6 projects part of the ForeSee Cluster, thus presenting concrete examples of the core values behind the new EU standardszation strategy that considers standards as the silent foundation of the EU single market and global competitiveness.

A third part consisted of gathering useful insights from the attendees’ perspectives. Indeed, at the beginning and again at the end of the workshop a fast poll was proposed to ask attendees how they expect standardisation can support innovation. According to the responders, access to market has been one of the key boost that standardisation can give to innovation. Further highlights emerged from the workshop will be elaborated in a chapter dedicated to standardisation and included in the future ForeSee cluster roadmap.