Our Vision

Our goal is to lead European companies and research institutions into a new era of biointelligent manufacturing that aims for sustainability, digitalization, and technological progress, thus strengthening the EU as a leading region of future production.

Biointelligent Manufacturing: Motivation and Drivers

Environmental Challenges

Since the world has only limited resources, a way must be found to deal with "the limits to growth", e.g. in terms of population growth and global consumption.
The satisfaction of needs of future generations concerning nutrition, health, habitation and energy is of great concern.
In order to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as the European Green Deal, rethinking towards a circular economy, sustainability and corporate social responsibility is necessary.

New Enabling Technologies

New methods for synthetic biology and genetic engineering of organisms have become available at affordable costs.
Growing computational resources enable better analysis and understanding of biological processes.
Recent advances in nano- and microscale manufacturing allow for new product classes.

Industry 4.0+

Sustainable industrial value creation forms the basis for the next leap after digitalization.
For the future, there is a great demand for a technology-based economy that is geared to current needs.
Diversification in the production landscape increases through new product classes.

Worldwide Race

Companies are competing for resources and striving for leadership.
The number of innovations and patents in Biotech is rapidly increasing.
Economic areas strive for technological sovereignty to maintain jobs and ensure prosperity.

The Definition of Biointelligent Manufacturing

Different definitions for biointelligent manufacturing are discussed within the community. They all share the vision that biointelligence is generated by the convergence of biology, technology and information technology.

ManuFUTURE sub-plaform aims at elaborating a viable, widely agreed definition for biointelligent manufacturing and identifying its components by:

specifying the differentiation to bioeconomy, biotechnology (red, green, white, blue…), biologicalisation of industry, biological transformation, bio-digital conversion, …
highlighting examples and best practices of products and production
describing manufacturing paradigms “bio” / “artificial” including bio principles and bio-inspiration (e.g. neuromorphic computers, deep learning, etc.)

Objectives of the ManuFUTURE sub-platform Biointelligent Manufacturing

Strengthen the European way of biointelligent technology development

European technology and markets
European domain expertise and networks
European diversity and values

Create New Production Ecosystems

Sustainable and Biointelligent Manufacturing both enables and requires the development of new production ecosystems, which is reached by:

a transformation of classical industries throughout Europe
providing a fertile environment and guideline for companies, SMEs and Start-Ups
fostering European-wide multi-disciplinary dialogue and knowledge transfer

Scope

Bio-digital convergence is often associated with healthcare and life sciences. Biointel-ligent manufacturing, however, is a much broader movement, including industrial production, social and ethical aspects.
The sub-platform addresses biointelligent manufacturing of any product class in any industry.