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Kevin Holland, CEO of Invest Northern Ireland

The Covid-19 Process and Organizational Improvement Grant (POIG) is one of eight new programs Invest NI developed over the past year to help companies manage the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses.

The Minister said, “This new Invest NI program will provide grants to eligible companies to accelerate the benefits of Industry 4.0, which is the ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices using modern intelligent technologies.

“This program supports companies in developing and implementing process and organizational improvements using digital technologies such as automation, robotics or digitization. These improvements will ultimately improve the resilience and efficiency of these companies going forward. “

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POIG is open to all companies that are active in one of the following sectors:

information and communication

professional, scientific and technical activities.

Eligible companies can apply for employee support and potential consulting costs as part of a process or organizational improvement project. Eligible projects must have a minimum labor (in-house) or consultancy cost of £ 40,000, of which the in-house labor cost must be at least 20%.

Applications are now open and will close at 12:00 noon on Friday, May 21st.

The maximum grant support is £ 50,000 for small and medium-sized businesses and £ 200,000 for large businesses.

Kevin Holland, CEO of Invest NI, said: “The specific objective of this program is to improve the company’s competitiveness by helping companies build internal teams to research, identify and implement improvements using new technologies. It will also provide support to seek advice from consultants if necessary when the knowledge is not available in the company.

“The in-house team needs to be specifically involved in exploring new and disparate technologies to help the business change. and then implement these new process and organizational improvements. The improvements must help the company to work in new ways and support it towards Industry 4.0. “

Funding is given to applicants on a competitive basis. Applications will be assessed and scored, with the highest scoring companies receiving funding until the available funding budget for this call has been fully allocated or the minimum number of points is met.

More information is available at www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/poig

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