Open Call

Project acronym: MANUELA

Project full name: Additive Manufacturing using Metal Pilot Line

Project grant agreement number: 820774

MANUELA is a metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) pilot line service covering the full AM development cycle including simulation, robust AM manufacturing and on-line process control, characterization, real-time feedback, post-treatment, AM qualification protocols and associated business model.

The aim of this Open Call is to select the most promising projects and help them to develop an end result in the form of a prototype, component, part or product demonstrator.

The Call is open from 1^st December 2020 to 31^st May 2022 and applicants may apply at anytime during this period. Submitted proposals will be evaluated upon receipt and in case they score above the required threshold the applicants will be approached in order to develop the Service Delivery Plan.

The Call is open for private companies regardless of their size or field of activity. In order to be eligible for this Call, your company will also have to be established in one of the eligible countries. Please check the list of countries in the attached document.

All successful applicants to the MANUELA Open Call will get access to a full suite of services for Metal Additive Manufacturing from design, to manufacturing and post-processing as specified in the MANUELA Handbook.

The winners of the Call will benefit from MANUELA unique pilot line composed of infrastructure and service providers from leading universities, research organizations and innovative companies in Europe. The selected applicants will access the pilot line through a Single Entry Point and will be provided with tailor-made support.

Up to 100k EUR worth of the costs of MANUELA services will be covered for each selected case. The applicants bear all of their costs in the Business Development case, as well as the costs of MANUELA services exceeding the 100k EUR threshold. The total cost of the case will be defined as part of the negotiation of the Service Delivery Plan between the successful applicant and MANUELA. The total cost will be composed of the following:

• Qualified human resources dedicated to the execution of the Business Development case.
• Consumables and materials required for the product/part/prototype demonstrator.
• Access to top-notch equipment and infrastructure of the pilot line.

Applications can cover any or all phases and aspects of metal based Additive Manufacturing – development of ideas, prototyping, materials assessment, process improvement, etc.

All proposals will be assessed shortly after the closest cut-off date and evaluated according to the following criteria:

• Concept
• Implementation
• Impact

Each criterion will be scored on a scale from 0-5 and the maximum overall score is 15. The threshold for individual criteria is 3. Proposals failing to achieve the threshold score for any of the individual criteria will be rejected.

An Evaluation Summary Report will be sent to applicants approximately 6 weeks from submission deadline. The entire process from proposal submission until the end of service delivery could take up to 9 months in the case that your proposal is selected for funding.

Your data and content of your application will be kept confidential and will be shared only internally with MANUELA partners, evaluators and European Commission. General data (such as type of company or country of origin) will be used to create statistics and reports which will be exploited through the project in terms of communication activities. In addition, the names of selected companies and their countries of origin will be published on MANUELA website as part of Public Evaluation Reports.

If you are interested in applying to the Call, please follow the steps listed below in order to submit your application.

1. Check out https://manuela-project.eu/.
2. Check the Technical possibilities document to see what is feasible for your project.
3. Download & read the Application Guidelines.
4. Register through the submission software at https://apply.manuela-project.eu/.
5. Fill in the application data in the submission software.
6. Download the Application Form from the software.
7. Complete the Application Form, save it as a PDF file (MAX 5 pages), upload it and submit it through the submission software.

We will accept only applications in English language.

Application Guidelines

Service Delivery Agreement (SDA)

Technical possibilities

If you need assistance with applying to the Call, or explanations about technology offerings and your possibilities with MANUELA, please send us your enquiries by phone to:  +420 226 217 422 or by email to helpdesk@manuela-project.eu. Helpdesk will be active Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We will be happy to help you. We encourage all applicants to check the technical feasibility of their ideas well in advance of submission.

Upon reception of the feedback, applicants will have the possibility to submit to the MANUELA Evaluation Panel complaints related to decisions of proposal evaluation and selection, if there is an indication that there has been a shortcoming in the way a proposal has been evaluated. The complaint procedure is not meant to call into question the judgement made by the evaluators; it will look at procedural shortcomings and – in rare cases – into factual errors.

Such complaint requests should be raised within 7 working days from the date of the evaluation feedback sent by the MANUELA Helpdesk. If a complaint is submitted after that deadline it will be rejected without further examination.

Complaint requests sent by applicants must be:

• related to the evaluation process;
• sent by email to MANUELA Helpdesk;
• received within the specified time limit specified.

An initial reply will be sent to complainants no later than two weeks after the deadline for complaint requests. This initial reply will indicate when a definitive reply will be provided.

A complaint committee may be convened to examine the peer review evaluation process for the case in question. The committee’s role is to ensure a coherent interpretation of requests and equal treatment of applicants. The complaint committee itself, however, will not re-evaluate the proposal, but it will examine the admissibility of the complaints, the legality of the actions against which the complaints are launched and factual arguments and claims of the complaints. Depending on the nature of the complaint, the committee may review the evaluation report and individual comments. In the light of its review, the committee will recommend a course of action. If there is clear evidence of a shortcoming that could affect the eventual funding decision, it is possible that all or part of the proposal will be re-evaluated. Unless there is clear evidence of a shortcoming there will be no follow-up, or re-evaluation.

Please note:

• This procedure is concerned with the evaluation process;
• The committee will not call into question the judgment of the individual evaluators;
• A re-evaluation will only be carried out if there is evidence of a shortcoming that affects the quality assessment of a proposal. This means, for example, that a problem relating to one evaluation criterion will not lead to a re-evaluation if a proposal has failed anyway on the other criteria;
• The evaluation score following any re-evaluation will be regarded as definitive. It may be lower than the original score;
• Only one complaint request per application experiment will be considered by the committee;

All complaint requests will be treated confidentially.