DIGIFABS is an EU-funded Erasmus Plus Alliances for Innovation project that will foster digital, resilience, and innovation skills to optimise the management of digital transformation in food and beverage (F&B) Small and Medium-sized Enterprises(SMEs). The DIGIFABS project will specifically target educators and students in F&B-related disciplines and SMEs in the sector. The project is co-ordinated by Dominik Lappenküper and his team at FH Münster University of Applied Skills, Germany.
DIGIFABS brings together a multidisciplined consortium of five Higher Education Institutions, two Vocational Training Institutions, four SMEs, a Regional Public body, a Social Partner and an NGO, all working to help bring advancement to the EU food and beverage sector which is the largest manufacturing sector in the EU making a major contribution to the EU economy.
Over the next three years, DigiFaBs partners will work to foster digital, resilience, and innovation skills to optimise the management of digital transformation in food and beverage Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. The DigiFaBs programme shall deliver an innovative programme that serves transdisciplinary students, educators as well as businesses (especially SMEs) collectively. Moreover, it will transfer principles of digital transformation as well as sectoral knowledge to foster needed digital skills and green skills as well as personal, social, and methodological skills and resilience, much needed in this fast-changing sector.
The consortium of 14 partners represents 7 European regions with diverse digitalisation competencies and high involvement in the F&B sector. In addition, the HEI partners will engage 100 students from three disciplines and 10+ scientists from Engineering / IT, Agriculture / Nutrition and Business fields and the business network organisations will engage 15+ SMEs from the sector to pilot the course programme including:
(1) a multidisciplinary action learning, ‘DigiFaBs’ summer school and challenge for students to acquire the digital, green and resilience skills both theoretically and practically so that they may become changemakers themselves and
(2) Piloting boot camps for educators and F&B SMEs to facilitate a DigiFaBs challenge in their region. The final materials will be made publicly available including introductory MOOCs.
Momentum is responsible for Work Package 2, Quality Assurance and Evaluation, conducting regular quality evaluation surveys, and then creating and delivering Quality Assurance reports to the consortium. Momentum is also collaborating with Preneurz to create and deliver the project Dissemination ensuring that the content created is relevant to, and reaches, the project’s target audience.