BRinging Artificial INtelligence towards SMEs

Project
BRinging Artificial INtelligence towards SMEs

Acronym
BrAIn

Projec ID
DRP0200025

Duration
1.01.2024-30.06.2026 (30 months)

Funding
Danube Region Programme 2021-2027

Partners
Pannon Business Network Association (Ungaria) – coordinator
ITC – Innovation Technology Cluster Murska Sobota (Slovenia)
Steinbeis 2i GmbH D (Germany)
Foundation Cluster Information and Communication Technologies (Bulgaria)
Agenția pentru Dezvoltare Regională Vest (Romania)
PROUNION (Slovacia)
Business Upper Austria
XR Institute Ltd. (Czech Republic)
University of Belgrade - School of Electrical Engineering (Serbia)
Organization for Entrepreneurship Development (Moldova)
Information Society Development Institute (Moldova)

Objectives 
The overall goal of the project is to contribute to the increase of the competitiveness of Danube regional SMEs by familiarizing them with the relevance and potential of AI and equip their employees for i4.0 transition processes and further adapt them to the humancentred i5.0 approach. This goal is to be achieved by capitalization on previously achieved results (e.g., DanubeS3Cluster, SmartFactoryHub, Danube Peer Chains, D-Care, D-CareLabs), training, testing via pilots, and applying novel solutions of AI in i4.0 as mentioned by the EUSDR AI White Paper. The project also aims at supporting developing AI-driven applications to overcome international value chain bottlenecks

Description
In the past two decades Danube countries’ economies were predominantly working towards integrating themselves into European value chains - mostly automotive and machinery – leading to a re-orientation on cost-efficient-based manufacturing. However, brain drain, ageing, low demographics, among others, resulted in a constant increase in labour costs, thus, decreasing this key advantage for them. The region was further impacted by the transformation of the manufacturing and industrial landscape – with i4.0, automation, digitalization, energy crisis, collapse of international supply chains, disruptive artificial intelligence (AI), all leading to dramatic shifts in the ecosystem. Nonetheless, by consciously managing and exploiting these paradigm shifts , especially in very important sectors such as food industry, health sector (also the manufacturing) and sustainable energy, BrAIn project can reveal new development opportunities for the Danube countries. This transformation is foreseen under the broader framework of S3 - seen by the EC Regulation 2021 /1060 as enabling conditions for financing innovation (PA1) at territorial level.

BrAIn project is new, original and innovative by proposing work on cutting age topics such as AI and i40/i5.0 skills in specific sectors – agri-food, manufacturing and health, and alongside pre-defined domains: green energy, labour force management and supply chain. BrAIN will implement place based demo-days and pilots, all leading to hands-on transnational knowledge-transfer acting as a validation point for the S3 strategies of the respected geographical areas.

Outputs 
Our partners will propose concrete AI solutions to alleviate already identified challenges alongside 3 vertical value chains sectors like manufacturing, agro-food, health-care industry, while accounting for the economic, environmental, and social sustainability. As a result, our partnership will contribute with tangible and sustainable results to bridging AI related gaps in the Danube Region by piloting solutions that can contribute to a more innovative, balanced, and convergent territorial development.