It’s a cold bright morning in Bologna when the parking of a hotel close to the “Fiera” motorway exit gets filled with cars from almost all parts of northern Italy. The second edition of the Federunacoma Tech Days has attracted about 80 delegates from research institutions and agricultural machinery companies. Their objective is to bring business and research together, to shorten the path to innovation and commercialization.
“We are very satisfied with the outcome – says Alessio Bolognesi – head of IT innovation at Federunacoma, the Italian industrial association of agricultural machinery – response by both worlds, research and business is very promising. As a sector association, our main goal is to facilitate exchange of ideas and collaboration. For many years, companies have been reluctant to seek researchers to solve their problems or to design innovative solutions. That was probably due to an old-fashioned way of keeping everything under control in companies R&D departments. Let’s be clear, intellectual property is still fundamental, more than ever, I would say, but most managers have understood that it’s not possible to thrive in todays’ market without an open exchange with universities and research centers”.
The other side of the coin might actually be the new attitude within universities, which translates into the so-called “terza missione” (the third mission) in the Italian academic world, of bearing an impact, through knowledge generation on society and business. “We are impressed- continues Alessio – by the range of topics on which Italian researchers are able to propose solutions. We have seen how the integration of different types of technologies may prove crucial in several fields. Take smart irrigation. We have drip irrigation solutions, but they need to be integrated also with more efficient weather forecasting systems, for instance to identify situations in which very heavy rainfall could be managed through advanced water storage strategies”.
Another issue is the interoperability challenge, as components from different manufacturers often do not communicate with each other effectively. “This is a very well-known problem, especially for user – adds Davide Gnesini, head of Federunacoma’s technical service– as they end up having to juggle different accounts and cloud services to manage information for a single machine, for instance an external pump, the irrigation system, and other components. Standardization initiatives are there to tackle the issue, but we still feel many manufacturers are not sufficiently informed about them”. One of the consequences is that users get lured into using single vendor solutions.
Many other themes are gaining attention, like machine electrification, an issue that not only relates to meeting sustainability goals, but is also a great opportunity to improve products, due to the high controllability of electric actuations, which enable operations and precision unattainable with traditional machines. “We believe the Tech Days formula is proving effective – recalls Alessio – we are now thinking about an international session, which could take place sometime between now and the EIMA trade fair, that will take place in November”.