Initial situation/motivation

Artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, high-performance computing and advanced digital tools: The fields in which companies and the public sector in Hesse need to take action in the digital transformation are diverse and complex. EDITH has been providing the best possible support since the beginning of 2023. The mission of the Digital Innovation Hub is to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), start-ups and local authorities in Hesse in implementing their digitalisation projects, overcoming the digital gap in Hesse and making the region one of the smartest and most sustainable in Europe.

Objective

EDITH is part of the EDIH | European Digital Innovation Hubs programme launched by the European Commission as part of DIGITAL EUROPE. Up to 230 of these innovation centres are being set up across Europe, 151 of which have already been launched. EDITH is the only hub in Hesse and brings together leading institutions in their disciplines under the coordination of the House of Digital Transformation (HoDT): the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, the Hessian Centre for Artificial Intelligence hessian.AI, the Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Darmstadt (MDZ) and the Frankfurt TechQuartier.

PTW's aim in the project is to incorporate the MDZ's existing expertise and services into the project and provide targeted support to manufacturing SMEs in their digital transformation. In addition, new holistic offerings for SMEs are being developed in the fields of circular economy and artificial intelligence. In workshops and learning programmes in the PTW learning factories, employees are enabled to apply large language models (LLM) (the most renowned example here is ChatGPT) in a production context. In addition, SMEs are sensitised to the topic of circular economy and skills in the area of circular economy are taught in a targeted manner.

Approach

In its four areas of expertise – Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, High Performance Computing and Advanced Digital Tools – EDITH provides support in four ways: in testing new digital solutions, in training teams, in finding investors and in building an ecosystem. In addition to a wide range of event formats and services, EDITH also closely supports a limited number of companies and municipalities in their digitalisation processes over a period of three years.

Acknowledgements

The project is funded by the European Union. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to work on this project.

Funding Source

Consortium partners