Unveiling Partners and Regions - West-Transdanubian Region

Western Transdanubia is situated in the western part of Hungary, bordered by Austria to the west and Slovenia to the southwest. The region's location along Hungary's border makes it a crucial gateway for trade and cultural exchange with neighboring countries in Central Europe.

Western Transdanubia is a key economic hub in Hungary, renowned for its diverse industries. Agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism drive its economy. The city of Szombathely is in the Western Transdanubia region, where the major challenge is the digital transformation of the conventional industries, mainly machinery, health and wood industries.

These sectors are essential to the region because:

• The region's machinery industry accounts for 16% of national employment while representing a quarter of national industry turnover.
• 36% of the turnover from the wood industry is generated in West Transdanubia.
• Pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and technologies are the dominant building on local strengths such as thermal bath and rehabilitation competencies.

Boosting digitalization among the regional Quadruple Helix actors is crucial to make them aware of the potential that the emerging technologies must transform the territory, improving their skills and, thus, the regional value chains.

From the region, Pannon Business Network Association as a project partner with close cooperation with the Municipality of Szombathely City with County Rights is participating in the BEST-DIH project.

PBN is promoting and assisting the digitisation of regional SMEs as an anchor for the regional development of digitisation initiatives through services like additive prototyping, series production, custom-based computer animation, AR/VR developments and AI-based algorithm.

The city is committed to digital transformation processes, adapting quickly to global supply networks and being imperative to create operative frameworks where initiatives increase the level of digitization of regional actors and, therefore, rely on the development of DIH initiatives.

We are using the opportunity of joining the Best DIH project in order to strenghten the regional framework to support innovation, digitalization, adopt good practices from the partners and improve the regional funding policies regarding digital transformation.