The "Factories of the Future" is one of the three Public-Private Partnership included in the Commission's recovery package. It will consist of a research programme of 1.2 billion Euro to support the manufacturing industry in the development of new and sustainable technologies. The programme will be financed jointly by industry and the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The research programme will begin with coordinated calls for research proposals which should be launched in July this year. The objective is to help EU manufacturing enterprises, in particular SMEs, to adapt to global competitive pressures by improving the technological base of EU manufacturing across a broad range of sectors.(Source: EU commision; http://ec.europa.eu/research/)
Factories of the Future is addressed in the ICT work programme 2011/12 (p. 84) under the following challenges/objectives:
> Challenge 7: ICT for the Enterprise and Manufacturing
