CNH INDUSTRIAL ITALIA SPA

Their core work

CNH Industrial Italia is the Italian entity of CNH Industrial N.V., one of the world's largest manufacturers of agricultural machinery (sold under New Holland and Case IH brands), trucks, and construction equipment. In EU research projects, they participate not as a technology developer but as an industrial end-user and real-world testbed — bringing operational farms, production lines, and deployed machinery as living laboratories for validating research outputs at scale. Their contribution to consortia is grounded experience: what works in a controlled experiment versus what holds up when embedded in actual equipment used by thousands of farmers and factory operators. They connect research prototypes to the hard constraints of industrial deployment, certification, and mass-market viability.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the earlier period (2017–2021), CNH Industrial's H2020 presence was entirely focused on connected agriculture — IoT, data-driven farming, food chain digitization, and smart farming business integration, consistent with the industry push toward precision agriculture driven by New Holland and Case IH product lines. By 2020–2024, the emphasis shifted sharply toward AI and machine learning: explainable AI, graph deep learning, and decision support systems applied specifically to manufacturing — signaling that CNH Industrial was beginning to embed AI into its production operations, not just its field machinery. The trajectory moves from digitizing the farm to intelligentizing the factory floor.

CNH Industrial is transitioning from being a connected-agriculture use case provider toward an active participant in AI-driven manufacturing intelligence — suggesting future collaboration interest in industrial AI, predictive maintenance, and production decision support.

How they like to work

CNH Industrial never leads H2020 projects — across both participations they appear as partner or third party, consistently in the role of industry contributor rather than research orchestrator. They are drawn to large-scale consortia: their two projects collectively generated 106 unique partner relationships across 18 countries, which is unusually broad for just two projects and reflects the mega-consortium structure of IoF2020 and XMANAI. Working with them means accessing a genuine industrial end-user who can stress-test technologies against real operational constraints, but do not expect them to drive the research agenda or manage the consortium.

Despite only two H2020 projects, CNH Industrial has touched 106 unique consortium partners across 18 countries — a consequence of participating in two very large EU-scale pilots. Their network is geographically European in scope with no discernible regional concentration.

What sets them apart

CNH Industrial brings something genuinely rare to a research consortium: a global manufacturer's production scale, international dealer and distribution networks, and equipment deployed across hundreds of thousands of farms and worksites. Most research partners can validate a technology in a lab or pilot field; CNH Industrial can contextualize it against what mass-market deployment in real agricultural and industrial settings actually demands. For consortia developing agri-food IoT, precision farming tools, or manufacturing AI, CNH Industrial's participation serves as both an industrial validation stamp and a potential route to commercial adoption at scale.

Highlights from their portfolio

• XMANAI
  CNH Industrial's only formally funded H2020 participation (EUR 283,750), focused on applying explainable AI and graph deep learning directly to manufacturing — a clear signal of internal digital transformation priorities.
• IoF2020
  One of the EU's flagship IoT agriculture initiatives with 73+ partners and five-year duration; CNH Industrial's involvement as a third party reflected their strategic position as a major agricultural equipment provider with real-world farm data assets.