UNDERPIN steps confidently into its final phase as Maribor hosts the 3rd General Assembly & second Road Show
After Vienna in November 2024, the UNDERPIN consortium met on 21–22 May in Maribor, Slovenia, for its 3rd General Assembly (GA) and the second stop of the UNDERPIN Road Show. Tiko Pro, our Slovenian partner, welcomed representatives from all ten partners to the recently renovated Hotel Habakuk for two days of concentrated work and lively exchange with the local manufacturing community.
During the internal sessions the partners confirmed that the project is firmly on track for its November 2025 finish line. Over the last 18 months we’ve been stitching together a Pan-European Manufacturing Data Space that:
- lets OEMs, energy giants & micro-SMEs share shop-floor data securely,
- feeds predictive and prescriptive models for maintenance and support, and
- tries to explore new revenue lanes for companies that thought data was “just exhaust”.
Besides the development of the data space and the development progress we made, partners published the new peer-reviewed papers, joined major events like Data Space Symposium, AIOTI Workshop on Semantic Interoperability for Digital Twins, GITEX Europe and collaborated on different events such as TORPEDOES – Data Spaces Datathon, and launched the joint SM4RT-UNDERPIN Deep Dive webinar series with the SM4RTENANCE project.
It’s hard work – every dataspace-oriented project in the DIGITAL Europe cohort is wrestling with the same puzzle: What’s the real value for an SME? Our answer so far: plug-and-play services (think “maintenance-as-a-service”), efficient onboarding, and governance rules that keep sovereignty where it belongs: with the data owner.
Are we finished? Not even close. But the quality of this partnership – Motor Oil, MORE (Motor Oil Renewable Energy), AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Department of Informatics and Telematics, Harokopio University, Semantic Web Company (SWC), Ontotext, Watermeλon Consulting, Innov-acts, Athena Research Center, SPACE HELLAS S.A., & Tiko Pro d.o.o. – gives us confidence we’re on the right track. Combining good tech matters, valuable industry players, great collaboration is what turns it into impact.
Road Show Maribor
On the evening of 22 May the doors opened to manufacturers, SMEs and clusters from Slovenia, Croatia and Austria. Speakers from Motor Oil Group & MORE, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Harokopio University of Athens, Ontotext, demonstrated – in plain business language – how a trusted data space can:
- reduce unplanned downtime,
- enable new “data-as-a-service” revenue streams,
- and give even the smallest supplier a voice in a pan-European ecosystem.
The interactive Q&A confirmed the growing interest of regional industry in concrete, deployable data-space solutions, but also showed us that the data spaces are still unknown area yet to be introduced to the industry.
We continue our quest to introduce the UNDERPIN data space to the industry and by the end of the project the partners will organise more road show events to present UNDERPIN Data Space and invite manufacturing industry to join.
The past six months moved UNDERPIN from concept to reality. With the core platform in place and industry interest growing, we can now focus on proving tangible value for manufacturers and SMEs. The consortium thanks all participants for their energy and insights, and looks forward to the next milestones on the road to a secure, sovereign and business-ready UNDERPIN Data Space.
