In the past 15 months the Europe INNOVA Standards Networks have been working intensively to identify standards encouraging innovation and to demonstrate the competitive advantages that can be gained when applying them. It is now a good time to have a look at what has been achieved, to plan ahead, and to think how the results can be efficiently disseminated to different user groups in order to make use of them in future activities.
This work has kept the six networks busy as they are currently preparing Good Practise Handbooks that aim to capture the insights from the projects in the ingenious use of standards to foster innovation in each sector.

For the whole duration of the initiative the mind-occupying question has been whether standards and innovation can actually go hand in hand. Stakeholders have not questioned the importance of standards, but there has been a need to work together to understand and clarify the connection between standards and innovation. Standards are often considered as retrospective instruments which retain all the well-known methods, processes and requirements instead of preparing new, innovative solutions. The Standards Networks initiative has, however, verified that this is not the only role of standards.

During the European Union Sustainable Energy Week held on 31 January 2008, STEPPIN, STAND-INN and DEPUIS demonstrated in practice the potential of exploiting standards to solve some current problems facing Europe in its ambitions to become more eco-innovative and sustainable. Moreover, the importance of the work of Europe INNOVA Standards Networks is recognised in the recent communication of the European Commission “Towards an increased contribution from standardisation to innovation in Europe” that was published on 11 March 2008.

The European Committee for Standardization CEN has no doubts about the connection between standards and innovation either. This will become even more visible when a new initiative, presented elsewhere in this issue, taken by the technical board of CEN is implemented.

This newsletter will also present some of the current challenges and activities of the projects EUROMIND and INNOVAFUN.

More information: www.europe-innova.org > Standards Networks

Three Standards Networks – STEPPIN, STAND-INN and DEPUIS – were present in Brussels on 31 January 2008 at the Europe INNOVA Workshop organised by DG Enterprise and Industry in the framework of the European Union Sustainable Energy Week 2008. The event’s theme "Innovative environments for eco-innovative companies: Instruments and experiences" focused on discussing what standards and public procurement can contribute in this area, what financing tools are needed and if Europe can create energy world-class clusters.

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In the past three months members of the EUROMIND project have carried out various business cases in which several promising standards have been tested for their applicability and coverage in the maritime industry. Two business cases have been focusing on the horizontal exchange of information between shipyards and e.g. design offices, within the same phase of construction. Another three business cases have dealt with vertical integration, where information is delivered from one phase to the next and between yards and suppliers.

All cases have focused on a detailed problem and a single standard. This has clearly brought to light the strong points and weaknesses of each standard. Another issue has evolved during the project: is there truly one best standard?

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The high fragmentation of the Italian furniture market with 20,000 retail shops and 400-500 industrial companies with a national distribution, forces industrial companies to invest considerable amounts of money in internet technologies in order to communicate with the end-customer and to operate with the retailer. Communication between all actors in the furniture value chain is a very complicated task. This is due to the great range of software for the management of catalogues, price lists, product configuration, 2D and 3D design (in the absence of a management and data transmission standard). The result is a lack of exploitation of the opportunities offered by the Internet.

On 18 April 2008 Federmobili, one of the INNOVAFUN project partners,  will host a conference in Milan during the “Salone del Mobile” that will launch a new and challenging project, involving the leading Italian furniture companies.

The objective is to create a business-to-business marketplace, consisting of a database developed in accordance with the funStep standard, AISO 10303-236, which contains manufacturers’ catalogues, product data and price lists.

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In most SME-based industrial sectors, such as the furniture industry, e-business offers are typically seller-driven due to the fact that the product distribution sector is even more fragmented than the production sector. In this environment, manufacturers offer their products and services through ad-hoc proprietary solutions, either on-line, CD-ROM or paper based, using proprietary corporate web sites and non-normalised order forms. Thus, different users from different e-market places cannot interoperate, and customers are wondering how they could make e-business with most of the providers using a common procedure.

When looking at the furniture industry it is estimated that almost 18 million orders covering up to 3 billion items are placed by furniture retailers and manufactures with furniture manufacturers. Various studies have shown that some 3.5% of sales are lost each year due to supply chain information inefficiencies.

In order to face this situation, INNOVAFUN Standard Network submitted a proposal for harmonisation of business transactions, with the support of funStep, and to gain the approval of a new ISO TC184/SC4 Preliminary Work Item (PWI) proposal to "Business documents for product transaction and management".

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The European Committee for Standardization CEN encourages more standards to support the culture of innovation. A strategic innovation working group has been set up under the leadership of the Finnish member of the Technical Board of CEN, Mr Antti Karppinen. The task of the working group is to identify means of merging standards and innovation.

Traditionally, standards have been used as instruments to describe products, processes or systems in a consensus process involving all interested parties. Therefore standards are normally retrospective documents with a wide support from users. However, standards do not necessarily plot the course for a future development - this is done in R&D departments, at universities and other research institutions.

The CEN innovation working group will try to position standards as a tool to disseminate research results. In this way standards could play a new role by bridging traditional producers and innovative research environments.

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The European Commission calls for a stronger role for standardisation in support of innovation for the effort to address the economic, environmental and social challenges that Europe is facing. The communication adopted on 11 March 2008 presents concrete objectives for standardisation and the use of standards, and consolidates on-going efforts and proposed measures to be launched both by relevant stakeholders and by the Commission.

Although standardisation is mainly an activity driven by the initiatives of market actors, the European Union considers it as a strategic asset and of great public interest especially when issues of safety, health, security and of the environment are at stake.

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