KET4CleanProduction

Manufacturing micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are creating added-value and employment in many different sectors throughout Europe. Nevertheless, EU competitiveness in global manufacturing is rapidly declining while other countries have risen up to the top rank of manufacturing. For this reason, manufacturing SMEs throughout Europe need to reinforce their innovation capacity through integration and usage of key enabling technologies (KETs) with focus in clean production to reverse the currently negative trend.

Clean production processes are key part of the new industrial revolution. In future factories will use energy- and material-efficient processes, employ renewable and recycled materials and adopt sustainable business models. However, the reinforcement of KET application for cleaner production in SMEs is confronted with a number of challenges and barriers, for instance, SMEs lack knowledge of potentials and benefits, lack of access to KET infrastructures in services in many European regions and SMEs reluctance to invest in changes in production using KETs that they cannot test or fully understand.

KET4CleanProduction promotes the use of advanced manufacturing technologies and related key enabling technologies by SMEs to upgrade their production processes towards resource and energy efficiency and sustainability. This is achieved by a pan-European and cross-border network of innovation services provided by technology centres.