University-enterprise technology transfer for education and training about industrial processes

The authors present a multidisciplinary project called PROPYME, which is a team effort of the University of Vigo (Spain) and the FEUGA autonomous government foundation (Galicia, North West of Spain), both supported by several industrial enterprises from the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) market. The main purpose of PROPYME project was to accomplish an innovative technology-transfer task from university industrial researchers, to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), for enhancing their productivity by the automation of their industrial and management processes. This involves a SMEpsilas effort not only by a financial point of view, but adaptation, knowledge acquisition and organizational changes. Moreover, embedding ICTpsilas involves adapting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools to integrate vertically process and systems, owned by the SME itself, facing to decision challenges based on economic value, knowledge and communication concepts. The PROPYME first phase is a portal Web with a demonstration multimedia tool, text, graphics, animations, audio and video, that shows fifteen industrial processes based on diverse technologies frequently used for industrial enterprises.