AddSmart - Creating value in products with smart, connected technology

Many companies that want to make their products smart and connected are looking for the right development strategy. How do you focus on value creation and how do you deal with smart, connected technology? Sirris and Fraunhofer IEM (Institute for Mechatronics System Design) have launched a joint research project (CORNET) with the support of VLAIO to develop a concrete approach that will help companies develop their smartly connected products.

Context

Those who set out to develop a smartly-connected product will find no well-trodden path to follow. Some references emphasise the potential offered by smart, connected technology while others go very deeply into the technological aspects of development.

Objective

With this project we want to meet the need of product builders for a concrete and accessible insight into:

Ways to add value as a starting point for development
The steps needed for getting from a product idea to a solution concept
How to make technology choices, e.g. for connectivity and cloud solutions
Technological building blocks for constructing proof-of-concepts
The expertise and development time required and proof-of-concept costs

With these insights, the AddSmart project aims to accelerate the target group’s transition to smart connected products by teaching companies about the conceptual development of products with smart connected technology.

The approach

We took insights into the conceptual development of smart-connected products and combined them in the following concrete project results:

An overview of smart product strategies for creating value with smart, connected products
A step-by-step approach for developing a smart, connected product from idea to solution concep
A starter kit with technological building blocks for a proof-of-concept
Four demonstrators explaining the above results via industrial case studies

These results are distributed to the target group during and after the project by means of articles, demonstrations and workshops.