Unveiling Partners and Regions - Province of Overijssel

Welcome to a captivating journey that transcends borders and embraces collaboration. In the upcoming months we will bring to attention a compelling series of articles presenting BEST DIH project partners and the vibrant regions they represent.

We start our journey with the partners from Netherlands, Province of Overijssel.

Together with the province of Gelderland, the province of Overijssel forms the region East Netherlands. The region borders the German states of Nordrhein-Westfalen and Niedersachsen.

The region has three important universities: the University of Twente,  specialized in technical and social sciences with a focus on robotics and medical technology, Wageningen University, a leader in Agrofood, and Radboud University, specialized in healthcare. In addition, the region is home to three universities of applied sciences, namely Saxion, Windesheim and the HAN. Together with the regional secondary vocational education, these institutions offer a wide range of courses.

Besides several large companies, there are approximately 400.000 SMEs in the East Netherlands region. Digitization is an important challenge for these SMEs, especially for the approximately 13.000 manufacturing companies in the region, since production processes are part of their business structure. The productivity of the production processes must be continuously increased so that the national and international competitive position is maintained.

To stimulate and facilitate the SME manufacturing industry in their digitization challenge, a broad collaboration has been developed between government, education and business. This collaboration started in 2015 and has resulted in the DIH Smart Industry BOOST, which has been further developed since 2023 into the EDIH BOOST Robotics EastNL, the independent platform for Smart Industry and Circular entrepreneurship in the Eastern Netherlands. Here, companies, intermediaries, government and educational institutions work together to achieve a competitive and sustainable industry.