From September 11 to 15, a Ukrainian delegation of Industry 4.0 policymakers visited Poland at the Future Industry Platform (FPPP) invitation. The visit aimed to familiarize us with the best practices for implementing Industry 4.0 tools and policies in Poland. The main results of the trip are in this publication.
The context of the trip
Studying the best European experience in creating and implementing national Industry 4.0-5.0 policies is a big challenge for all Ukrainian policy-makers, both state and non-state organizations. After all, no active policies or strategies for developing Industry 4.0 at the national level in Ukraine are supported by the state. Since 2018, the Association of “Industrial Automation of Ukraine” (APPAU) has been promoting a strategy project developed by order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. One of the key provisions of the strategy concerns the creation of a state agency for Industry 4.0.
Several benchmarking studies conducted by APPAU in 2017-18 spoke about the need to create such institutions. Unfortunately, neither V. Groysman’s government nor the next one followed these recommendations; on the other hand, in Poland, which in those years was also in no hurry with reforms in the digitization of industry, in 2019, Future Industry Platform FPPP was created under the Ministry of Development and Technology with the appropriate budget and resources.
As part of the stadium tour, organized and financially supported by the Polish side, the Ukrainian delegation could already observe the results of the not-for-profit FPPP 4-year activity. However, the goals and tasks of the mission included more than just monitoring or adopting the experience of the Polish side. Equally important were establishing and/or developing relationships with several Industry 4.0 stakeholders at the regional and national levels; more on that later.
The Ukrainian delegation included representatives of managers and businesses from APPAU, clusters, and leadership of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance, as well as the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine.
Rzeszów is the most attractive region for Ukrainian entrepreneurs
On the 1st day of the stadium tour, the delegation visited the key actors of the innovation ecosystem in Rzeszów, the regional center of the Województwo podkarpackie, the closest to Ukraine. There were several visits here – Aeropolis Technology Park, Rzeszów Innovation Park (RSI), powerful industrial firms – Fibrain (manufacturer of optical fiber and products in this segment), and Europa System (a large engineering company in the field of industrial automation).
Technopark “Aeropolis” is an example of a classic technology park that invites various companies: developers, manufacturing companies, development agencies, etc. Instead, RSI is focusing on cooperation between business universities and scientists. Two innovation parks look very ambitious for a city with a population of 200,000. Such a focus on the growth of innovations and large investments in this development (for example, the RSI building alone cost the local budget 5 million euros) is the result of a purposeful policy of the regional authorities. Technopark “Aeropolis” already generates several interesting tools and programs of innovative development, among which:
- Carpathian Fest is an annual festival of innovative startups, the next of which will be held on June 4-6, 2023. Participation is free for Ukrainian startups; many already have a large presence in Rzeszów. In 2023, Ukraine’s participation amounted to 43% of all submitted applications.
- The incubator for Ukrainian SMEs provides numerous services for starting a business in the Województwo podkarpackie.
The Ukrainian delegation was pleasantly surprised by the level of proposals explicitly focused on cooperation with Ukraine. Considering the favorable geographical position of Rzeszów (the closest regional center to Lviv), the Ukrainian delegation started negotiations on holding joint Ukrainian-Polish innovation forums. The Polish side is ready to support. The possibilities of cooperation with our partners—the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) of Lviv and Volyn and the Horodok Industrial Park are also evident.
Indeed, the role of APR is critical in many initiatives in the region. Projects for funding a technology park and an innovation park have passed through them, and today, they support two incubators and the Startup Festival. Such a leadership role of APR is explained by two main factors: the personal leadership of the marshal of the region, who defined an innovative strategy as the main one for the development of his region. And also a feature of the geographical situation—today, eastern Poland receives much more development subsidies from the European Union than other regions of Poland.
IVAN KULCHYTSKY, PRESIDENT OF THE AGENCY OF INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND HEAD OF THE INNOVATION COMMITTEE OF THE UCA
Kraków as a most developed regional Industry 4.0 centers in Poland
Kraków, the regional center of the Malopolskie wojewodstwo, also hosted our delegation at a high level. The organizers included in the program a visit to several innovative industrial centers—Research Institute of Ceramics and Building Materials and eDIH based on Hub4Industry.
The first institution is part of the network of 22 research institutes named after Lukasevich and fulfills the role of an innovation center, testing, and certification. For this, the Research Institute has numerous modern laboratories and one of the rare full-scale production sites in the EU, where it is possible to test various building materials.
Hub4Industry is the leading center of Industry 4.0 in Kraków, and eDIH was established on its basis in 2020. Numerous services for SMEs in the field of Industry 4.0 are already deployed here and are significantly expanded through operational laboratories, test sites, and test benches from leading providers included in the consortium of Hub4Industry participants.
Hub4Industry is formed by many leading enterprises of this region — Kraków Technopark, Kraków Polytechnic, VIM cluster, AGH – Mining Academy, Lukasiewicz Research Institute of Automation, leading businesses ICSec (cybersecurity), Entra Group (optimization of production processes), T-Mobile Polska (communication operator). Leading among them is ASTOR, the exclusive Polish distributor and system integrator of the Japanese robotics manufacturer Kawasaki.
Of course, the level of development of innovative ecosystems in industry, coordination, and interaction of their key actors is much higher than in Ukraine. At the same time, the level of individual solutions and applications of our developers does not look worse, and perhaps, in some cases, it is more innovative. However, we need to improve significantly in the area of ecosystem development.
OLEG Shcherbatenko, CEO of IT-ENTERPRISE AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF APPAU
Krynica: international, Eastern European forum
Krynica is the universally recognized Eastern European and Polish ‘Davos’. On the positive side, the scale, level, and atmosphere are very high. With more than 100 panels in three days, a wide range of politicians, business, and foreign guests ensures the development of new thoughts and strategies. On September 14, when a Ukrainian delegation visited Krynytsia, the Polish-Korean forum opened, which was opened by Polish President Andrzej Duda and the Korean Prime Minister.
In Krynica this year, the Malopolskie wojewodstwo, the leading partner of the forum, strongly promoted itself. This institution invited and supported a delegation of Ukrainian Industry 4.0 policymakers and spoke at the panel of this voivodeship on the development of innovative regional ecosystems. The Ukrainian theme is heard in half of the discussions. Oleksandr Yurchak, head of the Ukrainian delegation, CEO of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, notes the benefits of attending the forum and draws attention to the low presence of participants from Ukraine.
If we want the Reconstruction of Ukraine to proceed in our interests with the participation of Ukrainian contractors and manufacturers, we should already be at all important international forums and demonstrate our readiness.
The main conclusions and results of the tour stage
The study tour to Poland for Ukrainian Industry 4.0 policymakers provided a lot of new knowledge and insights about the organization of industrial hi-tech ecosystems, the role of the Future Industry Platform FPPP, and other actors at the regional level. Several preliminary conclusions of the Ukrainian delegation are as follows:
- Poland has strong and diverse leaders of Industry 4.0 at regional level. While the local Agency of Regional Development stands out in Rzeszow and they are main founder of several Innovation institutions, in Kraków the leadership belongs rather to Hub4industry (incl. eDIH). Meanwhile, local research institutes, technology parks, and universities are also very active. In summary, the ecosystem picture in Poland is not as “black and white” as in Ukraine, it is much more ‘colorful’, and the range of colors depends on the region and industry.
- In two visits, we also saw how local control system integrators are taking on the role of 4.0 innovation leaders. In Kraków Hub4Industry, the leadership role of ASTOR is obvious, while in Rzeszów, the local integrator Europa System creates complex solutions for large production segments. Although the level of involvement in developing open ecosystems, with a high level of interaction between various participants, is different, both companies have a common denominator—a high orientation and allocated resources for market and business development.
- There are likely many actors with leadership ambitions for developing innovative high-tech industrial ecosystems in Poland. That might cause some coordination and alignment issues, what is also typical for Ukraine. Instead, and this is a big difference with Ukraine, the Future Industry Platform (FPPP) has already taken the role of the national coordinator. To fulfill this role, the Agency has a separate tool—the regional innovation Councils of Industry 4.0, which includes the main regional stakeholders—leading universities, agencies, hubs, manufacturers, clusters, etc. Oleksandr Yurchak and Anatoliy Dolynny, the head of the Smart.City Resource Center could see this for themselves even before the trip to Poland—on September 7, they were invited as speakers and participants to the Innovation Council of the Malopolskie wojewodstwo meeting.
After all, the organization and reception of the Ukrainian delegation in two voivodships at a high level, the financial support of this mission, is also an excellent example of the roles and capabilities of the FPPP, which already partially fulfills the role of such a coordinator, as our trip proved.
Thanks to both teams of UCA and FPPP for excellent work in organizing the trip. Cooperation with FPPP is essential for building relations between regions and the businesses we are engaged in. The visit was balanced, full of meetings with various institutions and companies ready to implement joint projects. Now, it is crucial to qualitatively work out the agreements, in particular in terms of cooperation between participants in the markets of construction, robotics production, and intelligent management of territories.
ANATOLY DOLYNY, PRESIDENT OF THE UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF THE SECURITY INDUSTRY, INITIATOR OF THE CREATION OF THE KYIV HI-TECH CLUSTER
FPPP also begins the role of an external “trigger” to accelerate GR processes and Industry 4.0-5.0 advocacy in Ukraine. In Krynytsia, a Memorandum of Cooperation with UCA was signed, according to which the Polish State Agency FPPP will support UCA by transferring all its best experience and ready-t0-use tools in the field of SME digitization. The first is the SME self-diagnosis tool, the most accessible and popular in Poland.
In general, since three years, FPPP has already developed a number of tools and mechanisms to accelerate the digitization of SMEs in the industry—these are:
- Establishing benchmarking indicators of digital and green transformation
- Technology navigators: setting benchmarks, examples, and use cases for using new technologies for SMEs.
- Digital transformation road map generators.
- Digital competency testing tools for SMEs.
- A financial navigator that shows possible sources of funding for digital transformation needs.
- Educational courses “School of digital transformation leader.”
- Support of a network of certified experts: consultants for providing services to SMEs, etc.
This study tour was very useful to speed-up and foster the collaboration between Ukrainian and Polish partners. Apart from activities already fixed in MoU with FPPP, partners plan the deployment of next activities:
- To continue with FPPP and all engaged partners the active exchanges through the Committee ‘Poland – Ukraine: collaboration in Industry 4.0’ which is considered as the main mechanism for effective coordination and alignment.
- UCA and FPPP will undertake steps for more intensive exchanges with Ukrainian Ministries to speed up and align the processes on policymaking in Industry 4.0-5.0.
- Ukrainian clusters highly appreciate the aid and invitation from Polish clusters, and they will participate in next fall’s events
- Composite material trade fair in Kraków, 4-5th of October
- The congress of Polish Cluster Association in Gdańsk, 8-9 of November
- European ‘Cluster meet regions’ event in Kraków, 10-11 of December
- ‘Quantum technologies’ conference in Warsaw, 17-18 of March 2024
The Ukrainian delegation highly appreciates the aid of FPPP, and all Polish partners, and hopes on the next deployment and follow-up of taken decisions.
Learn more about the Polish Future Industry Platform FPPP and key players in the smart industry