Innovative continuous upgrades of high investment product-services (USE-IT-WISELY)

Research Project, 2013 – 2016

Introduction:
Use-it-wisely is a European Union research project, funded under the FP7 framework, which will run from 2013 to 2016. The project draws on the world class knowledge of twenty partners from all over Europe, who are all leaders in their respective fields including: energy, machinery, space, office workspace, vehicles, ship building, furniture, academia, research, dissemination and exploitation.

The project is focused on the end-user. It will enable European manufacturers to produce products and services capable of adapting to rapidly changing markets, the changing business environment, and customer goals by demonstrating the state of the art business model and platform, which enables life-long adaptation of high investment product-service. The adaptation is accomplished by a purposeful and demand-led sequence of innovative continuous product-service upgrades. The project will go through vital steps to ensure a successful outcome. These include: platform development, the design of prototypes, testing of prototypes, demonstration and execution, and key communications and exploitation tasks.

Key actions:
Use-it-wisely will develop and demonstrate the adaptation platform consisting of the following three elements:
1. A multi-disciplinary actors-product-service system model;
2. An adaptation mechanism based on the knowledge and skills of all actors involved with the system;
3. An interactive collaborative distributed environment, where the partners work out the adaptation steps.

Advantages of the Use-it-wisely approach:
The Use-it-wisely approach will result in a scientific breakthrough by creating and validating a holistic systems engineering structure that combines human-machine systems, product lifecycle management, business and organisational dynamics and lifecycle assessment. The Use-it-wisely approach is unique as its application dimension is made up of six Clusters combining research institutions and industries. Clustering is as advantage as it exploits the existing strong links between the research organisations and industry, allowing for a more productive project and in turn, greater benefits for the end user.

Benefits:
1. Product scope: high investment, durable, long service life, one of a kind or highly customised products (the longer the life, the more the opportunity for upgrades);
2. Application scope: human-system integration issues (human-related uncertainty is handled by the human actors in the adaptation loop);

Benefits of the project for Europe:
The Use-it-wisely project will deliver significant benefits for Europe, by enabling European Manufacturers to provide products and services capable of adapting to new customer goals and rapidly changing markets. The project will investigate a new business model that implements continuous product-service adaptation through a sequence of small innovative steps.

Benefits:
1. Use-it wisely will enable new business for the manufacturers and their suppliers, subcontractors, and open new opportunities for customers;
2. The project will increase competitive advantage by means of product service agility, lower costs, shorter lead times, and reduced environmental impact;
3. Help transform people’s knowledge and skills into product-service value, in turn strengthening Europe’s global competitiveness and securing domestic employment.