CECIMO press release – DESIGN MTS conference at Lamiera 2014: Project partners give informative presentations on CSR in the machine tool industry to a very interested audience

Brussels, 22 May 2014 – Last week, the DESIGN-MTS project partners offered a conference during the Lamiera 2014 exhibition, at the Bologna Fiere in Italy. The aim of the conference held on 15 May 2014 was to present to the different stakeholders present the multi-stakeholder platform of the project DESIGN-MTS – DEfining Social responsibility Interventions for a Grounded Networking in Machine Tools.

To open the conference, Benedetta Giovanola, assistant professor in Moral Philosophy at the University of Macerata and DESIGN-MTS project coordinator took the floor to present corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the project goals. She was followed by Emir Demircan, project manager at CECIMO and project partner of DESIGN-MTS, who spoke about the European machine tool industry, underlining its global nature and the importance of sustainability for the growth of the sector. He also explained the different project objectives and deliverables.

Rossana Revello, coordinator of Confindustria CSR forum, Claudio Carlone, from the Green Mountain project on integrated sustainability approach at territorial level, and Enrico Annacondia, UCIMU technical manager then each presented different Italian sustainability and CSR initiatives. This conference served as a good platform to reach the project’s stakeholders from industry, academia and civil society. It was a perfect opportunity to explain how they can get involved in the project and how they will benefit from the tools offered, such as training modules, a help desk, guidelines and the exchange of best practices. “Innovative CSR and sustainability initiatives have always been widely implemented by European machine tool companies. With the DESIGN-MTS project, we will disseminate such business practices to our sector and value chain, and show our stakeholders how the European machine tool sector contributes to society, the economy and the environment,” said Filip Geerts.

The European project DESIGN-MTS was launched in July 2013 and is coordinated by Università Degli Studi di Macerata. The project aims at raising awareness on CSR in the European machine tool sector, enabling ¬enterprises from the sector to have a strategic approach to CSR and sustainability, and supporting a coordinated management of a CSR platform. The DESIGN-MTS project will identify best business practices in the field of CSR and sustainability and disseminate them on a single platform towards the value chain. Its four focus areas are employability & skills, demographic change & active aging, workplace challenges, and environmental challenges. Enrico Annacondia commented on the project: “Integrating a strategic approach to CSR into machine tool companies’ core business is critical for the competitiveness of the sector, especially given the potential multiplying impact on several sectors of its supply chain.”

More than 30 people from the industry, research institutions and academia, attended the DESIGN-MTS conference in the LAMBDA area, a section dedicated to sustainability throughout the Lamiera exhibition from 14 to 17 May 2014.

For further information on the project visit www.designmts.eu

About DESIGN-MTS
The DESIGN-MTS project was initiated and partly funded by the European Commission (contract 333720) and is led by Università Degli Studi di Macerata in partnership with CSR Europe, CECIMO, Central European Initiative (CEI), Istituto Ricerche Economiche e Sociali (IRES) and the University of Nottingham. It was launched on 1 July 2013. For further information about the project, please contact the project manager at the University of Macerata, Barbara Chiucconi at barbara.chiucconi@unimc.it.

About CECIMO
CECIMO is the European Association of the Machine Tool Industries. We bring together 15 national Associations of Machine Tool Builders, which represent approximately 1500 industrial enterprises in Europe*, over 80% of which are SMEs. CECIMO covers 98% of total Machine Tool production in Europe and about 34% worldwide. It accounts for almost 150,000 employees and a turnover of over €22 billion in 2012. More than 83% of CECIMO production is shipped abroad, whereas almost half of it is exported outside Europe*. www.cecimo.eu
*Europe = EU + EFTA + Turkey

For further enquiries:
Contact person:
Filip Geerts, Director General
Tel +32 2 502 70 90 / Fax +32 2 502 60 82
filip.geerts@cecimo.eu