"The manufacturing activity in Europe represents today approximately 22% of the EU GNP. It is estimated that in total 75% of the EU GDP and 70% of employment in Europe is related to manufacturing. This means that each job in manufacturing is linked to two jobs in manufacturing related services.
European manufacturing has great potential as part of a sustainable EU economy, but its success will depend upon continuous innovation in products and processes."
"Manufacturing is the driving force in EU’s economy; it accounts for 37.5 million direct jobs; 75 million via related services. Moreover, its turnover represents 6,930 billion € and the value added 1,800 billion €."
"The SMEs are of utmost importance for the European Manufacturing sector. In 2005, 2.3 million enterprises or over 99 % of the business population in Manufacturing were small and medium-sized enterprises. These companies accounted for 59 % of the total employment and 45 % of the value added in the whole sector."
MANUNET SSA (Specific Support Action) was born in 2004 as an initiative of the Basque Government. Based on the facts stated above, the Basque Government decided to generate a continental initiative to move towards a European regionally-based Research Area on manufacturing. That was the origin of the SSA “MANUNET: walking towards a European Regionally-based Research Area on New Processes and Flexible Manufacturing Systems”.
MANUNET SSA was very useful to draw the European manufacturing map, identifying regions and countries having a twofold characteristic: an important relative manufacturing weight and own funding support. The positive results of MANUNET SSA showed the need of an ERA-NET CA (Coordination Action) in the area of Manufacturing.
More information:
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/coordination/docs/manunet_individual_project_sheets_en.pdf
The SSA laid the foundations to the CA (Coordination Action) with the same name. MANUNET was launched on 1st April 2006 with the aim of guiding SMEs towards the European Research Area (ERA) by providing:
From 2007 on, MANUNET has strongly increased the number of regions/countries participating (43%) achieving the following objectives:
More information:
http://netwatch.jrc.ec.europa.eu/nw/index.cfm/info/Net/NetId/6A855A0172B3530CE0440003BA06A43D
ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/coordination/docs/manunet_en.pdf
MANUNET supports innovation-driven, close-to-market research and development projects in manufacturing. It aims to encourage cross-border value chains that emerge from advancing technologies. During every first quarter of every new year, MANUNET opens a call for proposals to co-fund manufacturing research projects by preferably small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their strategic partners. Any short-term projects with small-medium consortia are expected. Funding is dependent on national and regional programmes. More than a decade of yearly calls has proven MANUNET as an ideal complementary programme halfway between Horizon 2020 and the national/regional funding programmes.
Projects should clearly demonstrate the following attributes:
The MANUNET project is active for 5 years to facilitate the development of new value chains by setting up geographical poles of activity across Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany, Norway, Romania, Turkey, Israel, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Russia. 24 national/regional funding programmes participate in MANUNET Initiative. To know more, contact your local MANUNET advisory Partner.
Download leaflet.
After 10 years of network activities MANUNET has looked back to its performance, analysing the coordination of the network and the impact that its calls have had in the RTD community.
The result of the analysis not only has shown the general success of the network, but also has identified barriers for further success. If you want to read more about it please download the Impact Assessment report.
MANUNET and MANUNET II have launched 10 successful calls for proposals from 2007 to 2016. The indicators below describe MANUNET and MANUNET II as widely used programmes, focused on SME needs, with a demonstrated impact, strongly rooted in the European manufacturing substrate and with a clear presence in participating countries and regions.
Planned goals have been achieved:
MANUNET has proved to be an ideal complementary programme halfway between NMP and the national funding programmes. It brings SMEs into international cooperation, focusing on short term projects with higher success ratio and smaller consortia.
For more information about funded projects check: Success stories
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement nº 721267.