PolyHalter project is a direct response to demands for innovative, cost-effective solution which would allow car manufacturers to install lighter, more efficient and lower-priced engine parts (with smaller number of assembly parts). Development of polymer oil filter halter represents significant technological advance in field of engine parts, giving Polycom access to still-developing niche market and significant advantage over competitors. While aluminium has been gold standard in production of oil filter halters for over 70 years, new polymer oil filter halter will enable the combination of minimum noise level, maximum mass savings and maximum price reduction at the level of which hasn’t been achieved so far. Final product will be positioned as a better, cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative to aluminium oil filter halters which won’t need high volume logistics and will be capable of multifunctioning. Number of components within the product will decrease, as well as possibilities of errors. In order to bring the currently developed prototype of polymer oil filter halter from current TRL 6 to industrial and market readiness, key innovation and commercialisation activities still need to be implemented. Additionally, new process (and injection moulding tools) for injection moulding of polymer filter halters will be further optimized to allow manufacture of up to 20 different types of polymer halters in 5 years after completion of the project, for various industries (automotive industry, compressor manufacturing, electro industry, home appliances industry, aircraft industry and similar). Proposed innovation business project is in line with the work programme topic IT-1-2014: Small business innovation research for Transport.

The I4MS program in H2020 has been and is a great success for the Digital Transformation of European Manufacturing SMEs. Phase IV of the program was focussing on DIHs and on highly innovative technologies like Digital Twins and AI. In particular, the AI REGIO Innovation Action developed a virtuous alliance between Regions, DIHs, AI solution providers and Manufacturing SMEs, which is materialised by a new methodology for DIHs service portfolio and customer journey analysis, an AI4EU -oriented toolkit of Data and AI resources, a network of Didactic Factories and their TEchnology and REgulatory SAndboxes (TERESA) and an ecosystem of SME-driven experiments and their Digital Transformation pathways. It is time now to align such important outcomes to the evolution of Manufacturing towards Industry 5.0, the evolution of cloud AI Technologies to AI-at-the-Edge, the evolution of H2020 to Horizon and Digital Europe programmes e.g. to EDIH, Data Spaces and AI TEFs (Testing and Experimentation Facilities) for Manufacturing. Some of the AI REGIO I4MS Phase IV motivations are now evolved: it is time for AI REDGIO 5.0 for keeping momentum of AI technologies adoption in Manufacturing SMEs. AI REDGIO 5.0 aims at renovating and extending the H2020 I4MS AI REGIO alliance between Vanguard EU regions and DIHs for a competitive AI-at-the-Edge Digital Transformation of Industry 5.0 Manufacturing SMEs. AI REGIO outcomes (methods and tools for DIHs governance and cross-DIH collaboration; Data Space and AI for Manufacturing toolkit; Didactic Factories network and TERESA facilities; SME-driven experimentations in 14 Vanguard regions) will be i) extended to the I5.0 principles; ii) enabled by the newest trusted technologies along the edge-to-cloud continuum; iii) supported by European open source hw/sw reference implementations, preserving EU values and ethical principles; iv) interconnected with the EDIH network in DEP as well as with the AI TEF nodes and the Data Spaces deployment program.