United Kingdom has begun its year long chairmanship of pan-European research and development programme Eureka with a promise to launch major strategic IT projects, set to include high performance computing and data processing, officials said.
The UK which began its year long presidency of Eureka in June, carrying on from Belgium, said the push for "strategic projects" followed debate between Eureka members across Europe over the next "medium term plan" of Eureka - expected to shape Eureka policy for the next five years.
The UK said it will respond to fears that major initiatives focussing on key technology areas have been in decline over recent years.
UK officials said: 'Following on from this discussion, the United Kingdom would like to identify three different types of strategic project during its chairmanship.
'These are key, multidisciplinary technology, collaboration between large and small companies within the same supply chain, and collaboration between industries in different sectors,' the Official said.
UK officials have yet to unveil full details of their project plans but one strategic project will be to develop so-called 'agile factory' methods that can adapt factory output almost on demand, one Department of Trade and Industry official said
'In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s factories concentrated on churning out a standard product. Now we need to be more flexible. Companies need to be able to produce efficiently in small runs,' he said.
The official said Eureka projects in agile factories would be used to try and narrow the gap that the Japanese and U.S. have already forged in this technology.
'Agile factory techniques go from the whole factory right down to a single machine. Whole systems such as parts and raw materials ordering need re- examination,' he said.
Other top priority projects for the UK's year of leadership include a project in the aircraft sector for virtual-reality cockpit design - a key HPCN application and high-tech medicine, the official said.
'The aircraft for the future will be designed almost totally by computer. We hope to launch a project concerned with a virtual reality design of cockpits,' he said.
'Already you have wing and engine design using virtual reality but this project would be concerned with the environment the pilots would face such as the positioning of apparatus,' he said.
The official said that this project would not be confined to one or two European companies.
'It will be pan-European. It does not matter to us whether it includes British Aerospace, Airbus or Tupulev. The project will ensure that companies are able to meet design requirements set down by the U.S Federal Aviation Authority and European bodies such as the UK's Civil Aviation Authority,' he said.
The UK move coincides with the launch of a Eureka 2 bln ecu microelectronics development for European Applications (MEDEA) initiative which is set to carry on from Eureka's JESSI submicron semiconductor effort.
The official said the project would be one of the largest Eureka projects yet, although he refused to speculate over the value of the Eureka funding. 'If the project gets underway it will be a big one,' he said.
The UK has also promised a major review of the running of the initiative will try to cut the bureacratic practices that many feel are creeping into Eureka, ten years after the launch of the programme, UK officials said.
A UK government official responsible for Eureka, said: 'What we are saying is that after ten years it is time that we take stock of how Eureka works. We need to ask if it is still delivering what its clients need.
'We need to see quite how the secretariat operates and look at areas where we might perhaps make economies. We may have to cut out the bureaucracy that many people feel has started to creep in,' he said. The official said that the UK would not be afraid to tell Eureka members to wield the axe.
'If our review says that everything is fine then we will keep things as they are. But we will look at how each office operates and ensure that everything is at a minimum,' he said.
Eureka members come from 24 European countries. The research and development programme aims to the EU's pre-competitive R+D results closer towards products for the marketplace.
Armed with the Eureka label, these projects stand a much improved chance of winning national and EU R&D subsidies.