A Social Manufacturing Framework for Streamlined Multi-stakeholder Open Innovation Missions in Consumer Goods Sectors

Democratized innovation holds undeniable promise for European producers, but the integration with corporate innovation practices is in its infancy. While the interest is real, it is still neither easy or efficient for producers – especially SMEs to benefit from collaborative production. The iPRODUCE project takes well proven concepts and approaches (from DIY manufacturing, FabLabs, Makerspace), and aims to upscale them through innovative technology solutions and to install them in well-connected multi-stakeholder ecosystems under an umbrella concept of collaborative Manufacturing Demonstration Facilities (cMDF)”. We organize our work under a social-manufacturing platform that enables multi-stakeholder interactions and collaborations to support user-driven open-innovation and co-creation. At the heart of the iPRODUCE platform is an open digital space supported by a set of innovative tools that cover matchmaking, secure interactions, generative product design, process orchestration, agile prototyping, usability evaluations and lifecycle management. We complement these technical tools with a strong social component that aims at easing the notorious hardship of engagement with makers and aim to open up to new maker segments, while we improve on SoA tools for Lead User Innovation identification. The iPRODUCE platform will be deployed in six local ‘ecosystems’ which cover different levels of maturity with collaborative production, diverse objectives and application areas spanning from home furnishing, automotive/mobility, consumer photography, medical ecquipment and more. The platform supports knowledge and resource sharing across cMDFs and all our results will be monitored and evaluated.