Project Objective

The goal of IDEALIST is to support SMEs in industrial ecosystems: energy-intensive industries, aerospace and defence, mobility, transport and automotive in their ability to understand and adapt to changes brought about by rapid and unexpected developments in the world such as the COVID-19 crisis or the Russia-led war in Ukraine. These sectors are of capital importance for the European economy and despite their specificity, have common challenges that the project will help to address: transition to more sustainable practices, competitiveness issues in a context of scarcer raw materials and more expensive energy, change in consumption habits. Being more resilient means giving SMEs the opportunity to be a player in these changes and no longer just a spectator or follower.

Scope of work

The project will evolve around three pillars: 

• strategic foresight to establish relevant tools and behaviours to anticipate and better prepare for change in an orderly and systematic way;
• technology uptake to overcome obstacles related to the implementation work of advanced technologies and lay the foundations of alliances between tech-savvy and traditional SMEs;
• supply chains to identify critical dependencies and weaknesses in order to limit the impacts of disruptions on value chains. 

This work will lead to the realisation of pilot projects promoting the meeting between ecosystems, facilitated by the use of the Hack&Match method. The mobilisation of the AGORA platform led by EIT Manufacturing will support this objective of matchmaking and community building.

4CF’s Role

As a partner, 4CF will lead tasks related to developing and strengthening the strategic foresight practices of manufacturing SMEs to better identify longer-term changes and trends, anticipate their impacts for the future and build tools to deal with them. 4CF will reinforce clusters organisations’ capacity to support SMEs in their strategic foresight needs, including:

• mapping the drivers and forces of changes of the three ecosystems addressed;
• training the trainers (industrial partners) in foresight;
• delivering traditional SMEs from the three different industrial ecosystems a foresight support service to better prepare themselves for change, opportunities and challenges;
• increasing Futures Literacy and future preparedness of manufacturing SMEs.

Project partners

The project is carried by a relevant consortium of 14 partners from 6 European countries and Ukraine representing several thousand manufacturing companies. 

Coordinator

CREATING INTEGRATED MECHANICALS SYSTEMS AUVERG (CIMES-HUB), France

Partners

COMET SCRL, Italy
EIT MANUFACTURING ASBL, France
DITECFER – DISTRETTO PER LE TECNOLOGIE FERROVIARIE, L’ALTA VELOCITA E LA SICUREZZA DELLE RETI SCARL, Italy
ASSOCIATION INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION OF UKRAINE, Ukraine
ALBATROS ALLIANCE D’ENTREPRISES AU BENEFICE DES ACTIONS THEMATIQUES DE RECHERCHE A OBJET SCIENTIFIQUE, France
GEOKOMPETENZZENTRUM FREIBERG EV, Germany
4CF SP ZOO, Poland
POLYMERIS, France
ASOCIACIÓN CLUSTER DE AUTOMOCIÓN DE ARAGÓN, Spain
FEDERACJA FIRM LOTNICZYCH BIELSKO, Poland
CHEMIE CLUSTER BAYERN GMBH, Germany
FUNDACIO EURECAT, Spain
MORAVSKY LETECKY KLASTR OS, Czechia