Objective
The CUTE project will develop an IT based methodology for the encouragement and guidance of continuous improvement (CI) initiatives within business processes for smaller companies. It is intended to build on results from the EuroCInet project (EUREKA), and the TIQS project (ESPRIT) which have defined practical CI criteria and methods for business process improvement. A major focus of the project is to collate and combine the 2 sets of results and develop a Continuous Improvement Reference Standard (CUTE "Roadmap") for use by SMEs in guiding them towards business process improvement. This "Roadmap" will then be embedded in a software package (CUTE) which will be used by SMEs to guide and assess their progress in relation to the business improvement criteria. All the results will be validated by the users, the intermediary bodies and the user groups.
CUTE will be aimed at small companies to provide the assistance they need for a self-help approach to CI. This will bring the benefit of encouraging small companies to adopt CI whereas previously they would not have done because of the cost of employing consultants.
SMEs need guidance and support to begin to embark on the road to Continuous Improvement. They also need encouragement to begin the CI process, moving away from purely reactive (firefighting) activities to proactive improvement measures. The CUTE Roadmap (CI Reference Standard) and the associated software system will guide and support them in their CI endeavours and encourage companies to implement and maintain the CI programme. The CI reference Standard will be public domain and as it's usefulness becomes widely known then many opportunities are envisaged for providing the CUTE software and related consultancy, support and training services.
The expertise within the consortium will be used to provide the CI knowledge and software development skills required for the project. Substantial attention will be given to defining the requirements for the project, building on existing research, consortium expertise and on surveys with SMEs. All the partners will be significantly involved in the requirements phase. TWENTE and HMA will develop the methodology. TASIS and KISS will jointly design and develop the CUTE s/w system. All partners will be heavily involved in testing the system to ensure that all requirements have been met. The users have been chosen as typical SMEs with no current CI programme. They will define the priorities, help with the requirements, validate the results throughout and will act as 2 demonstrators providing significant help for exploitation. Working with the intermediary bodies (in workshops for example) will provide opportunities not only for validation and idea, but also for widespread dissemination activities.
The results from EuroCINet and TIQS will be assessed in terms of their contribution to the CUTE "Roadmap" for CI. In parallel, the users and user groups will be asked for their requirements in terms of IT support for CI. The CI "Roadmap" will be generated by the partners and validated by the users, user groups and intermediary bodies. The full specification for the methodology will be generated and the CI methodology developed. The methodology will be embedded within the software system and the first prototype produced. This will then be fully validated by the users (earlier versions will have been briefly tested and validated). The results of the project will be widely disseminated using intermediary bodies, conferences, workshops, the EuroCInet and ESPRIT projects internet sites and the HMA distance learning system.
The project will be exploited across Europe by the sale of software products, services, training and consultancy. There will be two main exploitation routes: the EuroCINet network (through TWENTE) and the EOQ network (HMA is an active member). The two demonstrators will greatly assist the exploitation efforts and show the applicability of CUTE results to SMEs.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences internet
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software software applications system software
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software software development
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Programme(s)
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Coordinator
85100 Rhodes
Greece
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.