The third Matchmaking Event focused on “Virtualisation of production processes”, was held from 4 to 6 March 2020 in Belgrade, Serbia. The event was organized by the Serbian Automotive Cluster (AC Serbia), with the participation of near 30 representatives from 20 organizations coming both from the consortium partners and regional companies interested in the topic. This high level of attendance could be achieved by offering some of the companies the alternative to participate remotely, in order to counteract the concerns related to the spread of the coronavirus. As in previous matchmaking events, the main goal was to identify synergies among the project concepts previously presented by SMEs, in order to promote the development of potential joint collaborative projects.

In this occasion, it’s worth mentioning the high number of technology suppliers among the attendants, providing evidence of their experience in digital twins, AR/VR technologies, etc. All of them showed their willingness to provide solutions to the project concepts presented.

As a result of this meeting, several opportunities for collaboration have been identified. Most of them are based on a simple buyer-seller relationship, so in the following weeks, efforts will be focused on searching for other companies with similar problems, interested in developing joint projects. As a complement to these B2B meetings, the agenda of the event included other activities such as the visit to the Albon Engineering plant in Serbia, specialized in the manufacture of connecting rods for the automotive sector.

Additionally, AC Serbia organized a Demolab too, with the participation of the companies Zumoko and Mitsubishi Electronics, where participants could know better, see and try technologies in the field of virtualisation, such as the use of virtual reality glasses for different industrial applications.

Finally, this last matchmaking event was also the perfect framework to remind the joint projects arisen from previous meetings, both in the topic of “elasticity of production processes” and in the “robotics and AI” one. The reason for that was to give other SMEs the opportunity to join, in case of interest.