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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SAFECHILD (SAFECHILD: Innovative Safety System for Children Transported in Vehicles)

Teaser

Summary

Statistics show, that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of children deaths in US and Canada and European Region (where about 700 children die in road accidents each year}. What is even more alarming (despite mandatory use of various CRS) is that this situation has not changed over last few years. We face two main issues: (i) the industrial under-investment in R&D and innovation (i.e. CRS used today are optimized for frontal impact only) and, (ii) the misuse of restraint devices from the costumer side (i.e. wrong belt adjustment). During 2005, in the USA only, costs associated with motor vehicle-related fatal and non-fatal injuries of 0 to 14 years old children were over 3.6 billion USD.
Despite the severity of the problem, research on child endangerment on the roads and on development of prevention/security systems remains surprisingly limited. This applies to both research on accident causes as well to industrial research aiming to improve of existing CRS. Sad truth is that such valuable programme like Australian CREP was never repeated in EU. What\'s more, European and American child restraints makers reluctantly include CREP findings in their products. The simple rule says: don\'t go beyond regulations, because its expensive.
The objective of the SAFECHILD project is to significantly improve safety of children transported in private vehicles. The ultimate goal is to put in the market a system, that will offer children transported in motor vehicles protection level that is not achieveable for any other child seat.

Work performed

Within the frame of the project the following tasks were performed:
â€¢ Requirements and Market Analysis: A detailed analysis has been done in cooperation with a specialised market analysis consultant. The analysis has helped us to better quantify the current market size, market barriers, distribution channels, and the most common behaviours of our potential customers when shopping (medium and high medium class with the high level perception of their children safety). We have also analysed our competitors (companies operating in the field of CRS), their current products and new developments. We have identified whom they bought their components and/or the whole product. Finally, an update on the current legal aspects of putting SAFECHILD CRS in the market (current regulations and homologations to be fulfilled in Europe) and the options for IPR protection has been tackled.
â€¢ Industrial Production Feasibility: During more than 3 months we have been working in a first attempt for optimizing the final design and manufacture chain. We have also analysed what would be the best production strategy: (i) manufacturing strategy, (ii) operating policy and (iii) partnerships (suppliers) aiming productionâ€™s level (iv) capacity (defined in our initial business plan) and (v) recognition of possibilities of storage of the final product. We have based our analysis not only under economical parameters, but also under sustainability parameters (e.g reducing transport by having nearby suppliers) and quality parameters (from the quality control of supplied components to the final product). The result is a production feasibility schema that will serve as roadmap to implement a 3P (Production Preparation Process) methodology in the Phase 2 of SME Instrument.
â€¢ Business Plan: We have built a business plan based on 4 business model canvas, result of our initial market research.

Final results

IDAP Technology had manufactured the first prototype of pre-tensioner and active head protection system, build in a Child Restraint System, that successfully overcame all standard regulated crash tests. This prototype was awarded in numerous innovation exhibitions all over Europe and during SME phase-1 project, a more detailed identification and analysis of the market size, market barriers, distribution channels and potential clientsâ€™ behaviour patterns have been done.