FUNCTIONARY-III: Request for Industrial Partners to join the Industrial Advisory Board

Project description

Introduction

Flanders’ process industry and port logistics are entering a “triple transition” that is now moving from strategy to execution: electrification & flexibility, digitalisation, and tighter EU security and safety obligations. In practice, companies are being asked to (i) operate plants more dynamically (load-following, electrified units, modular deployments), (ii) exchange more data across company borders (terminal transport–site), and (iii) meet escalating cybersecurity expectations for essential/important entities (NIS2) while maintaining functional safety compliance (IEC 61511). The bottleneck is no longer a single technology component. It is the lack of a validated, reusable engineering methodology that co-designs functional safety + cybersecurity + energy flexibility + logistics operations across the full chain. Without such a methodology, flexibility participation is slowed down by risk aversion, and logistics digitalisation remains fragmented—hindering competitiveness in the chemical cluster and Flemish ports.  FUNCTIONARY-III extends the current plant-level work (cSBO - FUNCTIONARY-I & COOP work – FUNCTIONARY-II) beyond the plant fence to the full “process–energy–logistics” chain, validated on one representative pilot: solvent / flammable / reactive cargo logistics linked to energy-flexible chemical production (terminal → storage → transport → site). 

Goals

The project will deliver a reusable “Security-aware Safety across the Chain” methodology and toolchain that allows industrial end-users to quantify, compare and justify design and operational choices (e.g., “lean vs conservative” protection layers; which monitoring to implement; how to safely activate flexibility; how to respond to cyber/energy/logistics events).

Request

To foster interaction with the industry, the project partners are looking for companies that wish to be involved in this cluster strategic basis research (cSBO) project as part of an Advisory Board.

More specific, the project partners are searching for companies with expertise/interest in:

• Partners with expertise in transporting, storing and producing reactive chemicals and/or solvents;
• Partners facing challenges in cybersecurity, functional safety, energy flexibility and logistics operations.
• etc.

The primary role of companies during the pre-project phase is to tailor the project proposal to the actual needs of the companies and thereby maximize the likelihood of future utilization of the results. During the project execution, a two-way dialogue between the researchers and the user field involved remains essential to achieve the targeted knowledge transfer from scientific research to concrete applications.

The primary role of companies during the implementation phase is to:

• Align research with industrial needs, ensuring applicability, scalability, and market relevance;
• Validate solutions, enabling their translation into economically viable applications;
• Provide expertise, infrastructure, and use cases to accelerate deployment;
• Support concrete valorisation pathways, including pilots, business models, and market uptake.

During the cSBO project execution, companies may contribute as member of the Advisory Board. In addition, they may prefer to undertake parallel R&D activities (bilateral collaboration with (one of the) research groups, O&O-project, etc.) that are related to the subject of the SBO project at their own expense. In the latter option, the parallel R&D activities are not part of the SBO project. Companies may explore the possibility to obtain funding from the Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The Advisory Board is open to all interested companies, including companies established outside the Flemish region.

Important notice: Companies that wish to be involved in this cSBO project, will need to be member of at least one of the involved spearhead clusters (Catalisti, Flux50 or VIL). For more information on membership and membership fees, please contact Aron Deneyer (adeneyercatalisti.be (adeneyer[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and Stef Koelewijn (skoelewijncatalisti.be (skoelewijn[at]catalisti[dot]be)). In compliance to SBO regulations, the following requirements apply during the project implementation:

• All commercial members of the advisory committee are required to make a monetary contribution of minimum € 250/year in the case of an SME or minimum € 1,000/year in the case of a large enterprise or another organisation.

• A commitment to a substantive contribution from a content point of view and a time investment to participate in bilateral consultations with the project executors (upon request) and/or meetings of the advisory committee (at least 2x/year).

How to reply to this request

Please send an email before 15/06 to Aron Deneyer (adeneyercatalisti.be (adeneyer[at]catalisti[dot]be)) & Stef Koelewijn (skoelewijncatalisti.be (skoelewijn[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and briefly describe your interest and potential contribution to the project. After submission of your offer, you will be contacted for more information on the project contents, and a Letter of Intent and Questionnaire will be provided to join the Advisory Board of the project.