The ADMA project and final conference: IDEA Consult contributes to facilitating SMEs’ transformations towards ‘Factories of the Future’ |
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The ADMA Final Conference took place on the 22nd of June 2021, with around 300 persons attending the event.
The ADMA project (performed on behalf of the European Commission[1] ) enabled the creation and deployment of an ‘Advanced Manufacturing Support Centre’ to support SMEs in transforming towards becoming ‘Factories of the Future’. IDEA Consult and the other project partners (including Agoria, in the lead of the project) were able to achieve (relying upon direct and fruitful cooperation with inspiring manufacturing SMEs) the following key breakthroughs:
- The creation and deployment of a Pan-EU and holistic (covering various ‘tech and non-tech’ fields) methodology, (built upon the ‘Made Different’ methodology), taken up by very diverse SMEs, acting in different innovation ecosystems.
- 110 SMEs have been benchmarked through the ADMA scan, of which 69 companies in 12 different European countries have received a fully detailed ADMA Transformation Plan.
- 20 SMEs have been further supported in the implementation phase, identifying and deploying concrete solutions to their needs and ambitions.
- More than 15 Learning Network Events, enabling peer learnings among SMEs leaders, have been organised.
During the ADMA Final Event, IDEA Colleagues Wim Van der Beken and Jean-François Romainville were among the speakers and panellists presenting and discussing the key outcomes, learnings and recommendations associated to this initiative and to the overall EU support-framework for assisting SMEs in their digital and green transitions. These insights will be gathered in a Final Report and disclosed in a near future.
While the ADMA pilot project is now slowly ending, IDEA Consult and its partners have been thinking and working on the upscale of the ADMA Pilot, towards reaching bigger factory floor’s impacts. ADMA supported SMEs-testimonials and breakthroughs indeed demonstrated that such a support scheme was efficient in supporting SMEs towards transforming into Factories of the Future.
[1] This project is performed on behalf of the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) under Service Contract GRO-SME-17-C-063.

Clients
- European Commission