Boosting CE Business Support Organizations (BSOs) capacities for I4.0 scale up support

On 1st of April 2020, Silesia Automotive & Advanced Manufacturing cluster, coordinated by the Katowice Special Economic Zone Co., officially started its activities in the CE1644 Boost4BSO Project - Boosting CE Business Support Organizations (BSOs) capacities for I4.0 scale up support, financed under the INTERREG Central Europe Programme.

The Boost4BSO has a total budget of EUR 972,160.00 and EUR 793,470.00 have been co-founded by ERDF. The Project duration is 24 months (from 04/2020-04/2022). The Boost4BSO Project is one of nine approved by INTERREG projects within the priority 1: Cooperating on innovation to make CENTRAL EUROPE more competitive.

Boost4 BSO Project aims at building up I4.0-related capacities of CE BSOs enabling them, as key innovation system actors, to provide effective and efficient support services for local companies in I4.0 transformation. Project Partners will jointly develop a comprehensive competence development package for BSOs and support them in creating a toolkit to faciliate SMEs in industrial transformation. This should ensure efficiency and effectiveness in business support services covering all key aspects and tools of Industry 4.0. The project aims to support SMEs from Central and Eastern Europe, often lacking the basic knowledge of the potential of Industry 4.0, in order to help them cope better with the industrial and digital transformation.

The transnational Boost4BSO partnership will capitalize on already developed building methodologies and product/service innovation approach of Interreg CE core projects InnoPeer AVM and Things+. The InnoPeer AVM project developed and tested a comprehensive, transnational AVM qualification programme, shaped to the needs of central European companies. On the other hand, THINGS+ project is focused in transformation of traditional companies into regional innovation motors, without any excessive investments. It's key output will be a new approach to improve entrepreneurs’ skills that help them introduce service innovation into manufacturing companies.

The Boost4BSO project consortium is formed by 8 partnerts from 6 CE countries:

• Business Upper Austria - OÖ. Wirtschaftsagentur GmbH (Austria)
• Friuli Innovazione Centro di Ricerca e Trasferiment o Tecnologico (Italy)
• STEP RI znanstveno tehnologijski park Sveučilišta u Rijeci d.o.o (Croatia)
• Cluster Mechatronik & Automation Management gGmbH (Germany)
• Centro Servizi Industrie S.r.l. – Polo MESAP (Italy)
• Katowicka Specjalna Strefa Ekonomiczna SA /Silesia Automotive & Advanced Manufacturing (Poland)
  
• Asociace výzkumných organizací, z.s. (Czech Republic)
• FH OÖ Forschungs und Entwicklungs GmbH (Germany)

Project Partners within the Project will cooperate with Associated Partners, which will be involved in the WPT2 as a 'second wave' BSO and will be beneficiaries of the training programme. Through the acquisition of new skills and training methodologies within Industry 4.0, the Associated Partners will be able to provide a wider range of services to their companies, stimulating change management processes both in business models and in the acquisition of skills related to new technologies.

Communication on Project kick-off