EFFRA
CIMES has recently joined the European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA), a non-for-profit, industry-driven association promoting the development of new and innovative production technologies. The key objective of EFFRA is to promote pre-competitive research on production technologies within the European Research Area by engaging in a public-private partnership with the European Union. It was established jointly by the MANUFUTURE technology platform and other key industrial associations.
THE VANGUARD INITIATIVE
The Vanguard Initiative is an initiative that is driven by a political commitment of regions to use smart specialisation strategy for boosting new growth through bottom-up entrepreneurial innovation and industrial renewal in European priority areas. CIMES is strongly involved in this network and especially in its "3D Printing" et "Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing" pilot projects. It was present on December 4th, 2017 in Brussels in order to follow these projects' activities and participate to a matchmaking B2B event.
4 MOTORS 4 EUROPE 
"Four Motors for Europe" is a long-lasting cooperation between the Regions of Baden-Württemberg (Germany), Catalonia (Spain), Lombardia (Italy) and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (France). The current goal of this cooperation is to reinforce the competitiveness of these Regions in economy, sciences and technologiesand to facilitate collaborative projects for European calls for proposals such as H2020. CIMES is working in this network alongside its partners, especially on "Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology, and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing" (NMBP).
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SMART SENSORS 4 AGRI-FOODÂ
The thematic partnership aims at setting up a platform between agri-food- and electronic/IT cluster organisations, relevant research and technology organisations (RTO’s) and other related stakeholders, to lower the barriers for agri-food companies to access and implement the newest smart electronic systems and to enable the Internet of Things (IoT) transition of the agri-food industry.
The collaboration between the clusters and RTO’s will create a trust zone between the involved sectors. This will facilitate the exchange of know-how and will accelerate the introduction and integration of smart electronic systems and embedded technology solutions in the agri-food industry in a broad sense (from multinationals to locally operating SME’s).
