In an era when disruptive technologies and rapid technological developments have become ubiquitous, players who participate in the manufacturing chain need strategies for cooperation, collaboration, and even cost-sharing at pre-competitive stages.
Interdisciplinary and international collaborations are encouraged by both Canada and Germany, and three of the leading R&D financing agencies from these countries have teamed up in launching this 2+ 2 call. The call is coordinated by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), National Research Council Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through its Project Management Agency at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
NSERC’s participation in this international call reinforces the importance of fostering relationships with domestic and international partners. It allows our research and industrial communities to access knowledge and expertise to generate world-class research results, in keeping with NSERC’s strategic plan, NSERC 2020, and specifically its objective, Go Global.
This call is aimed at enhancing the cooperation between industry—particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—and university research in both Canada and Germany under the comprehensive topic of Advanced Manufacturing–Industry 4.0. The overarching goals are to advance novel technologies, to spur innovation and to facilitate collaboration between Canadian and German partners while training highly qualified personnel. The collaborations fostered by this call are expected to lead to:
The topic of the call falls under the encompassing umbrella of Advanced Manufacturing–Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0, or the “Smart Factory,” refers to the digital transformation of manufacturing, connecting automated machines to each other, to their operators, to other processes and services, to the Internet of Things, and to the supply chain. The Smart Factory can act upon the available information to self-optimize, customize production, and self-manage for improved energy efficiency. It can also enable decentralized manufacturing. It represents the convergence of enabling technologies such as robotics, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, virtual reality, additive manufacturing, and the digitization of the supply chain. Some examples of research topics under this call are:
Projects to be funded under the call must have a duration of 24 months to 36 months.
The minimum duration has been chosen to allow the applicants to propose projects suitable for high-quality scientific publications, students’ theses, and training of highly qualified personnel such as graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.
NSERC will provide up to $1,500,000 in funding per year of the call (totalling $4,500,000 over three years), and a maximum of $300,000 per project per year.
The timeline of the call is as follows:
Consortia eligible for project funding must be formed by industrial and academic partners from both Canada and Germany, including, at a minimum:
Third-party participants (such as large companies, Canadian research institutes, not-for-profits, other levels of government, etc.) are welcome to participate on a self-funded basis.
The Canadian university researcher and the Canadian university must meet NSERC’s eligibility criteria to apply for Collaborative Research and Development (CRD).
The research proposals will be evaluated by the three funding agencies coordinating the call. There are two stages:
All projects will be tracked by a central database established at NRC-IRAP.
Letter of Intent
A common Letter of Intent, written in English only (as this is an international call), must be submitted to NRC-IRAP in Canada and shared with NSERC and DLR in Germany.
This Letter of Intent must identify all of the potential participants from both countries and provide an overview of the proposed collaboration and a high-level description of the project. A Project Lead must be identified on both the German and Canadian sides.
Each agency will conduct an assessment of the eligibility of the participants, as follows:
Full proposal
Projects with LOIs determined to be eligible by all three agencies will be invited to submit Full National Project Proposals to each of the respective funding agencies.
The Full Project Proposal consists of:
The Canadian university partner must submit the following CRD documents to NSERC following the procedures for online submission of CRD proposals:
In the application submitted to NSERC, in addition to the 10-page research proposal describing the Canadian proposal, a three-page description of the international consortium, which includes the master work plan and describes the complementarity of partners, their expertise, and the planned collaborations between the Canadian and German partners;
Three main criteria will be monitored in assessing the CRD proposals received by NSERC specifically for the 2+2 Canada–Germany call on Industry 4.0: project excellence, potential impact, and implementation.
I. Project Excellence
II. Potential Impact
The proposal should identify how the consortium’s work will:
III. Implementation
The following will be taken into account when assessing the implementation of the proposed work:
The German application will be assessed against the criteria posted on DLR’s website.
Only successful proposals that are recommended by Canada and Germany will receive funding.
NSERC contact
Dr. Marius Ivan
Manager, Research Partnerships/Manufacturing, Communications and Technologies
Marius.Ivan@nserc-crsng.gc.ca
NRC-IRAP contact
Mr. Tim Jackson
NRC-IRAP Germany National Program Coordinator
National Research Council Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program
Timothy.Jackson@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
DLR (Germany) contact
Dr. Barbara Hellebrandt
barbara.hellebrandt@dlr.de
or
Dr. Matthias Frattini
matthias.frattini@dlr.de
DLR Project Management Agency
NSERC invests over $1 billion each year in natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. Our investments deliver discoveries—valuable world-firsts in knowledge claimed by a brain trust of over 11,000 professors. Our investments enable partnerships and collaborations that connect industry with discoveries and the people behind them. Researcher–industry partnerships established by NSERC help inform R&D, solve scale-up challenges, and reduce the risks of developing high-potential technology.
NSERC also provides scholarships and hands-on training experience for more than 30,000 post-secondary students and post-doctoral fellows. These young researchers will be the next generation of science and engineering leaders in Canada.
The National Research Council–Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) is Canada’s premier innovation assistance program for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It is a vital component of the NRC, a cornerstone in Canada’s innovation system, regarded world-wide as one of the best programs of its kind.
The DLR Space Administration is located in Bonn, Germany. It is responsible for managing national space activities on behalf of the federal government. It is also home to several offices of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).