AI Manufacturing for Public Sector

In many industrial sectors, acquisitions from the public sector are an important revenue source (e.g., the pharmaceutical industry, technology equipment manufacturers, etc.). For those, it is critical to foresee market needs, as to enable maximization of the effectiveness of production processes, storage, and distribution. In parallel, even though recent R&D efforts have contributed to the wide-scale availability of public procurement data, this information is complex and its analysis is not trivial (nor cheap). While it is possible to commission market studies targeting the necessities of public clients, these analyses are often ad hoc, static, and inaccessible to SMEs.

The proposed AIM4PS AI Asset will employ state-of-the-art AI methodologies for intaking and processing public procurement data, taking as a reference the specific production- and product-related information collected from manufacturing EISs. The AIM4PS AI Asset will combine this information and generate a dynamic and interactive forecasting solution, allowing SMEs to better understand the needs of public sector clients, better characterize their market space, and ultimately lead to automated transformations in their complete manufacturing value chain, from production to logistics. The proposed solution, integrated with the AI REGIO ecosystem and fully compliant with all 7 AI ethical and trustworthy requirements proposed by EC’s High-level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG), will be easy to use, allow dynamic forecasting, and will be accessible to SMEs. The AIM4PS project will be coordinated by FORCERA, an ICT SME highly specialized in developing AI-based solutions for public procurement applications and integration with manufacturing EISs.

The AIM4PS AI Asset will target SMEs that have entities which are producers of public procurement as significant clients. The outputs of the project have the potential to be applicable to the majority of industrial sectors, and to be used by manufacturing enterprises commercializing in the EU-28 plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Georgia. To realize the experiment of the AIM4PS project and assess technical and business KPIs compliance, the pilot demonstration will focus on the pharmaceutical industrial sector due to its market volume, and relevance considering the outcomes of the proposal, and consider the Portuguese public sector market due to the know-how and network of the proponent company.