NIMBLE (https://www.nimble-project.org) the Collaboration Network for Industry, Manufacturing, Business and Logistics in Europe will develop the infrastructure for a cloud-based, Industry 4.0, Internet-of-things-enabled B2B platform on which European manufacturing firms can register, publish machine-readable catalogues for products and services, search for suitable supply chain partners, negotiate contracts and supply logistics, and develop private and secure B2B and M2M information exchange channels to optimise business work flows.
 
The infrastructure will be developed as open source software under an Apache-type, permissive license. NIMBLE’s governance model is a federation of platforms for multi-sided B2B trade, with mandatory interoperation between instances of the platform and with optional, added-value business functions that can be provided by third parties. This will foster the growth of a net-centric business ecosystem for sustainable innovation and fair competition as envisaged by the Digital Agenda 2020. Prospective NIMBLE platform providers can take the open source infrastructure, bundle it with sectoral, regional or functional added value services and launch the new platform in the federation. This federation will be balanced by cooperation and competition and will give manufacturing SMEs in Europe a stable and sustainable digital ecosystem.

In order to deliver the envisaged platform, we have identified five high-level objectives:
1) to build an easier communication channel (thanks to the standardization adoption, that allows the fast integration of new actors in the market, already using the format adopted by the platform),
2) to be able to trace all the production and to provide, easily and quickly, those data to the customers, to have a real time granular monitoring of production flow, to provide real time sharp forecasts of machinery and product availability,
3) to be able to monitor the workflow with “plug and play” sensors,
4) to be able to produce the origin certificate declaration (preferential and not preferential) automatically,
to reduce friction for collaboration.