TRIESTE – The collaboration between Area Science Park and the Maritime Technology Cluster FVG has enabled 20 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Friuli Venezia Giulia to access, free of charge, a digital maturity assessment programme and the specialised services offered by the European BEST 4.0 project, dedicated to technological transition and artificial intelligence in the Blue Economy.
The first results of the project, funded under the Interreg VI-A Italy-Croatia Programme 2021–2027, were presented in Trieste during a “Dissemination Day” hosted by Area Science Park. The initiative aims to transfer the principles of Industry 4.0 to Blue Economy companies on both sides of the Adriatic, supporting innovation in products and production processes through digitalisation, advanced technologies, and sustainable development.
Overall, the project involved 160 SMEs in a business auditing programme designed to assess their level of technological maturity, identifying the companies to be supported through targeted innovation initiatives and digital skills development. In Friuli Venezia Giulia, thanks to the collaboration between Area Science Park and the Maritime Technology Cluster FVG, twenty companies received the preliminary audit free of charge, allowing them to access the catalogue of services fully funded by the project. Following the selection phase, Area Science Park, a project partner, has now begun delivering the services.
During the event, the results of the support programme carried out together with consultants from infoFactory were also presented. The initiative started with an assessment of the needs related to the adoption of artificial intelligence by companies operating in the nautical and industrial Blue Economy supply chain.The analysis identified priorities shared by many companies: reducing manual work in data management, accelerating access to information, supporting strategic decision-making with more reliable data, and preserving corporate know-how by leveraging the expertise already available within organisations.
The assessment resulted in 42 proposed initiatives, mainly focused on the use of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems applied to technical and regulatory documentation, the digitalisation of reporting through voice transcription, the optimisation of design processes, and the monitoring of projects and deadlines.
One of the most significant findings concerns the practical feasibility of the proposed solutions: 55% of the initiatives were assessed as having a high or very high level of feasibility, indicating that more than half of the identified projects could be implemented immediately.
In addition to the demonstration and testing activities carried out with infoFactory, participating companies also received an initial overview of public funding calls suitable for submitting the pilot projects developed during the programme. In the coming months, Area Science Park will also work on defining a new catalogue of services for SMEs, building on the experience gained during the first two years of implementation of the BEST 4.0 project.
