Supporting Training Around Regions
Objectives of the project
Finding an equilibrium among the EU territories and solving competitive imbalances and instable situations caused by the enlargement to countries with different levels of development has always been of fundamental importance for the European Commission. In line with the EC commitments, at the end of 2005 the DG Enlargement launched a call for proposals, whose overall objective was to strengthen the competitiveness of regions and economic sectors particularly affected by enlargement by helpi9ng them to cope with social and economic changes resulting from enlargement and to identify new opportunities in an enlarged Union.
The Star - Supporting Training Around Regions has been submitted under this call for proposals and has, as overall objective, to deliver skills and competences in areas where border regions, the ones more affected by Enlargement, can gain a competitive advantage and create new sources of employment.
Target Groups
Sector management of SMEs located in border regions;
Aged and unemployed, but experienced workers.
Border Regions
Italy, Veneto, Venice;
Greece, Kentriki Makedonia, Thessaloniki;
Slovenia, Obalno-kraska, Koper;
Hungary, Békés, BčKpscsaba;
Burgaria, Vratsa, Vratsa.
The objective of the STAR will be achieved by improving the competitiveness of companies located in border regions delivering training action and workshops on Mass Customization approaches and Internationalization issues.
What is Mass Customization?
Product customization has been increasingly used by companies to achieve higher customer loyalty, satisfy niche markets, command premium pricing and provide stronger competitive advantage. Unfortunately, more product customization traditionally means higher costs and longer delivery lead times. Mass Customization is a strategy aiming to give product customization without incurring into the negative effects of customization costs and times. To pursue this strategy, mass customization might have to apply such techniques as product modularisation, postponement, product configuration, etc. However, techniques without people are not effective. Mass Customization requires specific competences to be implemented and it will be the very improvement of workers skills and competences in mass customization that the project STAR will pursue.
Why Internationalization?
In order to avoid the risk that original and innovative strategies remain un-useful and unusable because of alack of knowledge in techniques of market share conquest, new competitive and strategic skills and competences will be taught. The session in Mass Customization will be therefore joined by a session on Internationalization issues.
The project STAR aims at filling the gap in mass Customization’s competences, offering workers the possibility to attend for free training courses that will create experts workers, able to implement a Mass Customization strategy in their companies. An appropriate training would fill such gap of competence, preventing these workers to silently oppose to change, while improving their capability to contribute to the success of the company’s innovation as well as their value in the labour market. In class lessons will be enriched by the creation of an e-Learning platform that will guarantee an high and personalized training experience.
Three training courses are going to be realized within the project:
In Venice (IT) for the mechanic sector;
In Thessaloniki (GR) for the textile sector;
In Koper (SL) for the engineering and plastics processing sector.
Two workshops on Mass Customization and consumers’ protection are also foreseen:
In Vratza (BG);
In Békés (HU).
A guide of Mass Customization will be realized, including:
an explanation of what Mass Customization is, and a description of the main approaches that can be adopted to implement Mass Customization.
a collection of cases of companies already implementing Mass Customization throughout the countries of the project partners.
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