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greenSME - Driving manufacturing SME transformation towards green, digital and social sustainability

06/01/2022 - 05/31/2025

Research area Innovation and education in the digital society | Dr. Michael Kohlgrüber | Clara Behrend | Adrian Götting | Beata Lewan­dowska

In the greenSME project, a comprehensive strategy for the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing industry is being developed. First and foremost, SMEs are concretely supported in adopting technologies ("Advanced Technologies") to become more environmentally sustainable climate neutral, to remain competitive and to maximise the benefits for all parts of society.

Logo of the EU in front of building outline of several parallel lines. Below lettering "European Commission" and blue stripe

European Commission

In the GreenSME project, a comprehensive strategy for the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing industry is being developed. First and foremost, SMEs will receive concrete support in adopting technologies ("Advanced Technologies") to become more environmentally sustainable climate-neutral, remain competitive and maximize the benefits for all parts of society. It is envisaged that small and medium-sized enterprises will also receive financial support to implement various measures.

The project vision to achieve a transformation of the EU manufacturing sector towards sustainable development will be developed, among others, through the establishment of the Green SME HUB platform - which is a knowledge sharing community that brings together and connects manufacturing companies and other stakeholders. This Hub helps to develop and implement a long-term roadmap to build a Europe-wide ecosystem for sustainable SME development. In addition to the Hub and the roadmap, other intended outcomes are to develop an assessment tool and action plan for SME sustainability, as well as a white paper on the sustainable path for SMEs and the implementation of advanced technologies in business practice.

Practically, this sustainable development of SMEs is supported by a budget of 3 million euros available for SMEs to use consulting services for the development and implementation of strategic action plans.

  • FUNDACION TEKNIKER (TEKNIKER, Coordinator)
  • DBT (Danish Board of Technologies) and TU Dortmund University as drivers of social innovation
  • AFM (Spanish Advanced Manufacturing Cluster)
  • MESAP Cluster (Intelligent Products and Manufacturing, Italy)
  • SA&AM Cluster (Poland)
  • F6S Startup/SME community as participating clusters
  • CIM4.0 (Italy)
  • TU Braunschweig as technology-oriented research institutions integrating sustainability into the business strategy of SMEs.

Objective 1: Build a sustainable manufacturing SME innovation community: greenSME HUB.

Objective 2: Strengthen the capabilities of manufacturing SMEs to use advanced technologies for sustainable development.

Objective3: Adoption of sustainability principles by manufacturing SMEs.

  • Work package 1: EU - Roadmap for sustainable development of SMEs.
  • Work package 2: greenSME Community for the manufacturing sector
  • Work package 3: Sustainability assessment of SMEs and definition of action plans
  • Work package 4: Open calls for proposals for the implementation of advanced technologies and social innovations
  • Work package 5: Communication, dissemination and exploitation
  • Work package 6: Project management
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