After one year of the project’s start, the RIGHTWEIGHT partners met physically for the first time in Enschede (The Netherlands) on October 27-28th 2021. The 2-day event was hosted by the lead partner TPAC (ThermoPlastic Application Centre) of the Saxion University of Applied Sciences and counted with the participation of all partners.
Besides getting the chance to meet physically for the first time, the meeting aimed to evaluate solutions from the first challenge-based competitions. For this first round, close to 30 applications were submitted to the RIGHTWEIGHT support programme for solving lightweight challenges coming from key OEMs and Tier1-2 suppliers of the automotive and aerospace sectors. After a careful evaluation, the top-ranked solutions will move to the next phase and will start being incubated to advance their TRL with the support of our specialised field labs in the next 12 months. The auto-aero transferability of the solutions as well as their potential to deliver lightweight impact at affordable cost were considered essential parameters for the selection. During the meeting, the partners also discussed the upcoming activities of the project, which includes the specialised educational programme and the second round of challenge competitions.
For the former, a series of webinars on different lightweight topics will be organised in the next months for all interested SMEs. The topics include challenges and real needs of industry and therefore partners aim to have an impact on SMEs’ competitiveness. As for the latter, new challenges from the automotive and aerospace sectors are going to be collected in the coming weeks and the application procedure is expected to be open in early 2022. A series of supporting events will be announced very soon.
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