Photos of the participants of the Hach&Match Event
The first Hack&Match event took place at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute on 16 December and was a great conclusion to the year-long activities of EDIH Kyiv Hitech participants, as well as all supporters of Industry 4.0-5.0, the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance and the Association of Industrial Automation of Ukraine (APPAU). This report contains the main insights and conclusions of the meeting, as well as guidelines for communities for 2026.
General context. Opening of the event
Innovation brokerage is one of the key roles of EDIHs (European Digital Innovation Hubs). Unlike other similar events that also include elements of networking and matchmaking (various conferences, meetups, exhibitions, etc.), the format and concept of Hack&Match are based on a highly focused connection of demand (for innovation) with ready-to-use solution offerings. In fact, the very name Hack&Match means: (a) the processes of detailing and profiling specific business and user cases (Hack), and (b) matching market participants with each other (Match) in various configurations. Added to this is a financial component as well – “where to find funding for these innovative solutions.”
Building an effective format that connects (brokers) all three components is quite a complex and meticulous task for the organizers, since innovations in Industry 4.0 involve many challenging aspects – diversity (dozens of technologies, markets, and applications), difficulties in accessing industrial customers, gaps between developers focused on global innovations and local, somewhat conservative industries, and so on.
The event held on December 16 aimed to identify the needs of three market segments – the agri-food sector, district heating/thermal energy, and the defense industry – and to connect them with solutions from leading providers. The financial component was also mentioned, but it was not the main focus. The event moderator, Oleksandr Yurchak (CEO of UCA and APPAU), opened the event with an introduction to the format and objectives, and presented the key partners: the IDEALIST project (where APPAU is a member and where the original name ‘Hack&Match’ come from) and the EEN-Ukraine consortium (where UCA as is a member), which traditionally supports SME networking and matchmaking.
The event opened with a keynote speech by Nataliia Seminska, CEO of the Science Park “Additive Technologies,” who presented the park’s activities.
After lunch, participants also visited the park’s laboratories. The park specializes in additive technologies for medical prosthetics and today is the largest R&D center and innovation hub in this field in Ukraine. A distinctive feature of the park is that war veterans are not only beneficiaries and users of its activities (prosthetics), but also undergo training and become part of the development team. Participants were deeply impressed by the visit.
Overall, the activities of the Science Park “Additive Technologies” are a vivid demonstration of how the combination of social business initiatives, education, and science can stimulate the growth of an entirely new market segment (medical prosthetics) and significantly transform processes within higher education institutions, bringing them closer to concrete, applied market needs.
Oleksandr Yurchak articulated the key takeaway from the Science Park’s experience:
Can we scale this experience to other universities, regions, and applied dual-use domains?
Presentations by market participants – key insights
Maksym Tiutiunnyk (CEO of the Galartesian mineral water plant, APPAU expert) highlighted the latest Industry 4.0 trends that have already penetrated the agri-food industry and presented a number of applied business cases for the food sector. Advanced data processing and the integration of machine learning algorithms are in high demand for applications such as SCADA chart analysis, digital twins – simulators of food processing equipment – as well as in maintenance planning processes (preventive maintenance schedules). According to the expert, who has more than 20 years of experience in engineering and operations across various segments of the agri-food industry, there is still a critical shortage of such solutions in most sectors, and customers are largely unaware of the solutions already available on the market.
Anatolii Korzh (Director of the Ardenz plant, Board Member of the Ukrainian District Heating Cluster, hereinafter UHC) presented an ecosystem (holistic) case from the district heating sector. The essence of the case is that municipal (district) heating in Ukraine is highly fragmented – there are different generation sources, different solutions and standards, and different implementation approaches and architectures. As a result, the key problem lies not in the availability of individual technologies (they do exist), but in the lack of unified, standardized approaches to dispatching, data management, and network control. This is also an issue of community maturity – technological, project, and market maturity. The UHC formulates a demand for the creation of intelligent mini- and microgrids with open standards that integrate various heat sources and equipment. The key challenge is how to move from chaotic modernization efforts to a managed roadmap for digital and green transformation. De facto, the UHC articulates an ecosystem-level case that requires a comprehensive approach and systematic cooperation among multiple actors – technology and engineering companies, developers, communities, financial operators, and others.
Nadiia Vasylieva (Director of the Institute of Digital Transformation and expert of the Brave1 accelerator) outlined the key challenges of digitalization and automation in the defense industry market. The main barriers to automating defense enterprises are not technological, but systemic: financial instability, procurement, regulation, supply chains, and human resources – all of which together block the digitalization of products and processes. Nadiia systematically addressed each of these issues: unstable revenues and short-term contracts (which make planning impossible); complex procurement procedures and the absence of long-term framework contracts (which break digital value chains); specific supply chains, cybersecurity requirements, and electronic warfare (EW) considerations that create new demands and radically complicate automation compared to the civilian market; the lack of unified standards, interoperability, and “fast-track” certification pathways, which prevents the creation of standardized and highly scalable solutions that are the norm in NATO countries; and the shortage of skilled developers, along with competition from the civilian IT sector, which slows down the implementation of automation and digitalization.
The overarching message of the presentation:
defense enterprises need not point solutions or isolated technological support, but ecosystem-level solutions – institutional, financial, organizational, and standardization-related – otherwise scaling and automation will remain fragmented.
Presentations by developers and integrators
A market leader in the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies, IT-Enterprise, delivered two presentations – one on the deployment of AI agents in industrial applications, and another on production asset management (maintenance and repairs, MRO). Roman Yavorskyi, the company’s CSO, presented a wide range of AI agents that are already being widely implemented across various sectors of the economy – from retail and banking to industry and the defense sector. The key points of the presentations by Oleksandr Ochkasov (Head of the R&D Center and leading expert in Asset Performance Management (APM)) were as follows:
- Equipment maintenance in SMEs is still predominantly breakdown-driven and reactive, whereas APM should be a management tool rather than “firefighting.” Excel spreadsheets, the experience of technicians, and formal cost accounting systems do not provide an understanding of the root causes of failures and do not support managerial decision-making. Even when sensors and dashboards are in place, data are often not integrated into APM processes and therefore do not influence planning or reliability. The main barriers to implementation are not technological, but human – staff resistance, fear of control, and concerns about additional workload.
- An effective starting point for APM in SMEs is a minimal pilot project using already available tools (such as mobile phones) for equipment condition diagnostics. In such pilots, the benefits of adoption are obvious, and the focus is not on large, expensive implementations. At the same time, manual APM does not scale, so the next step is analytics, AI, and predictive maintenance as a logical continuation of the basic level.
The engineering group Techinservice was presented by Oleksandr Yurchak (with the support of Hennadii Kabalskyi, the group’s Project Manager, who was unable to attend). The Techinservice industrial group is a recognized leader in the construction of modern, high-tech turnkey production facilities in the agri-food sector, petrochemicals, energy, and other industries. The key points of the presentation were as follows:
- Techinservice provides full-cycle services – from feasibility studies to commissioning, operation, and maintenance – thereby removing key technical and investment risks for the customer. Its core value lies in in-depth upfront feasibility assessments, which enable either confident project launch or timely rejection of economically unviable ideas.
- The company combines its own technologies in green chemistry, biofuels, and petrochemicals with the integration of European solutions, demonstrating the capability to deliver complex, world-class greenfield projects.
- A key differentiator is that automation and control systems are developed “hand in hand” with process technology. In summary, the Techinservice Group is a partner for complex industrial transformations, where advanced R&D, engineering, economics, technology, and digitalization are integrated into a single, managed model for creating industrial assets.
The demonstration of digital innovations was continued by Oleksandr Perkhun, Head of the Metinvest Digital Data Processing Center. The key points of the presentation were as follows:
- Big data processing and AI within the company are moving from analytics to direct control of production, energy, logistics, and quality. In all cases, the key challenge lies in complex industrial processes with a large number of variables, where manual or intuitive control leads to losses, imbalances, and excessive resource consumption.
- The solutions are based on a combination of predictive and optimization models (ML, DL, AI, LLMs) integrated into real production and business processes – from blast furnaces to global logistics.
- The impact is measured in concrete economic terms: from tens of thousands of dollars per workshop to tens of millions of dollars per year, driven by more accurate planning and optimization. Key message: Industrial AI at Metinvest is a mature, data-driven decision-making practice that scales, delivers fast ROI, and serves as a foundation for Industry 4.0–5.0 transformations.
Oleksandr Stepanets, a leading expert of the DIH “Industry 4.0 Center KPI,” responded to the request of the District Heating Cluster with a proposal for a systemic solution in this field. His presentation demonstrated that smart district heating technologies are already available in Ukraine – from sensors and edge controllers to AI, digital twins, and cloud analytics – but that the key constraints are not technical. Instead, they lie in other dimensions such as customer culture, the level of cooperation, and project maturity. Real cases from the DIH (energy monitoring at KPI, smart sensors, AI-powered solar plants, digital twins of boilers) illustrate a shift from local automation to Industry 4.0-ready systems.
The core idea is the need for a unified, integrated digital platform that brings together assets, operations teams, managers, service companies, regulators, and communities. Transformation should proceed in stages: integration (3.0), dispatching and optimization (4.0), and the creation of a shared data space to enable scaling across communities. Such an approach makes it possible to organize the current “Brownian motion” of the district heating sector into a systemic model, in which the Ukrainian District Heating Cluster acts as the bearer of standards, the market architect, and a mechanism for scaling change.
Other aspects of data utilization and the integration of AI algorithms were demonstrated in presentations by Volodymyr Nochvai and Andrii Matviichuk (DIH NOSC-UA), while Lev Vanian, CEO of Forthreal, highlighted the advantages of microservices-based architectures.
More detailed information and materials from the event are available upon request at info@edih-kyivhitech.com
Synergy between EDIH Kyiv HiTech and the EEN to support innovation and build business connections
It is also worth noting that the event was organized with the support of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) Ukraine consortium, in which UCA act as partners. The “Hack & Match” format was integrated into EEN services as a tool to strengthen the innovation capacity (Innovation Support) of Ukrainian deep tech companies. As a result, participants gained not only a platform for pitching, but also opportunities for targeted matchmaking, which is a key network service for finding technology and business partners. This synergy enables Ukrainian innovators to more quickly access resources for commercializing their developments and to prepare for entering the EU Single Market.
Key conclusions and insights
All outcomes of the event will still be discussed among the partners of EDIH Kyiv Hitech. Meanwhile, the following points can already be highlighted:
1. The Hack&Match format has confirmed its relevance to the role of EDIHs as innovation brokers
The event demonstrated that innovation brokerage (Hack + Match) is one of the most complex yet essential roles of EDIHs. Unlike traditional networking events, Hack&Match enables a shift from a high-level overview of technologies to a detailed exploration of real business and user cases from industry players. This fully aligns with the EDIH mission – to reduce the gap between developers, integrators, and customers.
2. The key barrier to innovation is not the lack of technologies, but ecosystem fragmentation and a low level of collaboration
Across all three segments (agri-food, district heating, and defense), a common insight is the identification of challenges at the level of architectures, data, standards, and interaction rules. In other words, the issue is not about technical solutions themselves, but about ecosystem alignment – jointly designing how solutions should interconnect, scale, and operate within real sectoral and regional ecosystems.
3. The event clearly reaffirmed a thesis that APPAU has been promoting for more than five years: innovation clusters and EDIHs are the two pillars of regional and sectoral innovation ecosystems
The event clearly demonstrated a division of roles: sectoral and regional clusters (such as the Ukrainian District Heating Cluster) shape collective demand, systemic cases, and a vision for sectoral transformation. In turn, EDIHs provide technological expertise, innovation brokerage, testing, pilots, and access to EU networks and programs.
The synergy between clusters and EDIHs makes it possible to move from chaotic, point solutions to managed roadmaps for digital and green transformation.
The example of GDT Textile and its results is indicative for all the sectors and use cases discussed.
4. The transition from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 is manifested through real cases, not declarations
Presentations by IT-Enterprise, Metinvest Digital, Techinservice, DIH Centre 4.0 KPI, and other participants showed that AI, digital twins, predictive maintenance, and process optimization are already a reality. They also demonstrated that the greatest value comes not from individual tools, but from their deep integration into business and production processes, where impact is measured in concrete economic terms (ROI, cost reduction, efficiency gains). Together, this forms a practical foundation for the transition to Industry 5.0 – human-centric, sustainable, and data-driven industry.
5. Ecosystem-level cases require collective responsibility
The district heating and defense sector cases were particularly illustrative, as individual companies cannot solve systemic problems on their own. This creates a need for shared standards, environments, and communities for pilot testing, as well as long-term framework models of cooperation. This clearly points to the necessity of moving away from the logic of “selling solutions and products” or fast-track approaches toward the logic of co-designing market ecosystems.
Possible next steps – action guidelines for community participants
UCA, as the co-organizer of the event and the leader of EDIH Kyiv Hitech, sincerely thanks all partners and participants for the high-quality preparation and execution of the event. Our proposals for further continuation are as follows:
1. Hack&Match as a recurring format for clusters & EDIH Kyiv Hitech
This series should be continued across other sectors, with greater emphasis on the upfront collection and profiling of demands (detailed business cases). Key roles in this process should be played by consortium members, leading service providers, and advanced partners from among end customers. It is also evident that Hack&Match can serve as an entry point to specific pilots, EDIH services, and European programs.
2. A more systemic approach to ecosystem cases for UCA clusters
UCA clusters are encouraged to move toward a more structured approach to developing ecosystem-level cases – shifting from lists of problems to comprehensive transformation roadmaps. This is the approach taken a year ago by the TTT Alliance and is now being initiated by the Ukrainian District Heating Cluster in cooperation with EDIH Kyiv Hitech. Partners are invited to establish a Working Group to develop such a roadmap, which would be an important next step in launching the roadmap development process.
3. For the CoP 5.0 community within UCA
It is essential to fully leverage Hack&Match as a practical platform for CoP 5.0, where innovative solutions are “grounded” in real cases and where the principles of Industry 5.0 can be jointly and comprehensively explored. For example, the case of the Science Park “Additive Technologies” has a very rich Industry 5.0 dimension in terms of human-centricity as well as transformations within higher education institutions. However, experts need to highlight and articulate all these layers, aspects, and nuances, shaping scalable models. Notably, some event participants, such as DonNTU (currently based in Drohobych), came to Kyiv specifically in search of such models.
This event also demonstrated the need for better integration of CoP 5.0 working groups with clusters and EDIH participants. This includes joint work on reference architectures, data models, pilot templates, and scaling approaches – an urgent need particularly in the energy and defense sectors. A new initiative announced at the end of the event by UICA and TechUkraine – to create a joint media platform for Kyiv and the regions – should further strengthen these integration processes.
Overall, this event clearly demonstrated both the presence and the effectiveness of grassroots institutions within innovation ecosystems (such as clusters, EDIHs, and technical community hubs), as well as the need for stronger cooperation and integration among them. Our key message to all partners is that 2026 should become the year of transition from experimentation to the managed scaling of ecosystem-level solutions across critical industries.
UCA Executive Directorate
The event was organized with the support of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) project in Ukraine