Day 1: 27/08/2018

The COILab activity took place at Hebei University of Technology (HEBUT) on Beichen Campus at National engineering centre. The event started at 8:30 am with the welcoming of the consortium members and other participants from SMEs from Hebei by Prof. Tan (Hebut) and Prof G. Cascini (POLIMI). This was followed by COILab activities:

• COILab pilot projects - Introduction to the problem and requirement from SME enterprise, aiming to obtain some better design scheme to assist elderly in taking a shower, moving and so on. This was a project activity was proposed by a representative from SME enterprise (Tianjin Qian Bai Yi Furniture Co., Ltd.).
• Four teams composed of teachers, doctoral student and engineers work on the solution of the above problems. The EU partners were there to assist the teams in their project.
• Later they presented their innovative idea (what and how)
  • Mechanical High Branch Intermittent Fruit Picker along with the prototype machine.
  • A device for removing dust from solar power generation system by natural wind (Dr. Peng Zhang) with the prototype.

After the lunch all the teams presented their results of their collaborative design activity (with EU partners’ feedback and company representatives) followed by the discussion on lessons learnt on the COILab experience and definition of initiatives to ensure sustainability of COILabs in Hebei.

Day 2: 28/08/2018

The second day COILab activity took place at Tianjin University, Wenjin Road Campus. The meeting started by welcoming all experts and teams and introducing the meeting arrangement. This was followed by reporting of various case studies done by student teams on problems given by companies on:

• New design of shared bike
• Metamorphic robot
• Embedded intelligence terminal

This was followed by an after lunch brainstorming and feedback session done by the experts present. Reports on the improvements after the brainstorming and feedback session were presented by each team. Followed by a discussion on reflections on the project experience by all participants.

Day 3: 29/08/2018

The third day started with a presentation on “COILabs - Collaborative Open Innovation Laboratories for product-service innovation: what, why, how?” by Prof G. Cascini. The director of international operation and commutation department of Tianjin City- Jianjun Liu followed the discussion by talking about International innovation in Tianjin City. Li Jing talked about International innovation platform of university-industry in TJU.

Later in the morning al the partners presented their preliminary work and achievements of COILabs in their universities. The consortium meeting ended with a round table discussion about COILabs on how to explore the needs of enterprises and training institutions (Senior Training Office).