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Context

The automotive sector is one of the most important of the European economy, and very SME-intensive. Yet, while the SMEs are a major part of the industry, significant obstacles still exist which prevent them from fully participating in it, one of these being the existence of many incompatible ICT systems across the sector’s supply chain:

As a result any SME that wishes to collaborate with a number of larger manufacturers will often be forced to maintain several such systems, an effort that needlessly increases cost and reduces logistical flexibility.

Auto-Gration Proposal

The Auto-Gration project aims to harmonise and facilitate business processes within supply chains of the automotive sector, at European and international levels, by creating a Collaborative Architecture (CAr) that allows existing e-Business systems to seamlessly communicate with one another:

The thus achieved interoperability between enterprises will enhance the production efficiency of supply networks by increasing information transparency and extending factory automation to network automation.

The Auto-Gration Project

The Auto-Gration project is aimed at providing a technical assistance service, on the basis of a tender issued by DG Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission, by developing an analysis study, an interoperability reference architecture and a set of pilot prototypes for the harmonisation of business processes and data exchange architectures and standards, at European or international level, within the automotive sector, to facilitate the participation of SMEs in global digital supply chains. Its ultimate objective is to create a favourable environment that will stimulate and enable the uptake of ICT and eBusiness technologies, notably by SMEs, in this highly SME-intensive sector in Europe

The Auto-Gration project has the following objectives:

• Analyse the current situation in terms of eBusiness adoption;
• Develop an overall sectoral collaborative reference architecture of business processes and data exchange models, in order to achieve interoperability at cross-border level all over Europe
• Demonstrate the feasibility of the aforementioned reference architecture, through setting up and monitoring sectoral and inter-sectoral cross-border pilot-prototypes, involving as many companies as possible, notably SMEs, along the value chains;
• Organise a workshop to present and validate the reference architectures and the results of the pilot-prototypes;
• Promote awareness and dissemination of the benefits and business opportunities deriving from the creation of digital value chains, of the aforementioned reference architecture and pilot results, through the creation of publicity material, a “Guide to eBusiness: towards a seamless digital value chain in the Automotive Industry in Europe”, among other instruments;
• Explore the feasibility of establishing a potential Memorandum of Understanding among main sectoral stakeholders.