The project identified an increasing pressure on EU manufacturers to be more efficient and innovative in their processes. The cause of this pressure was identified by the project as increased production capacity in low-cost economies and increased innovation and level of sophistication of supply chains in high-cost economies.
The main problems undermining the competitiveness of SMEs were limited knowledge of lean/agile techniques, limited understanding of regional governments, lack of knowledge transfer to SMEs, and a lack of resources amongst SMEs. The method applied was to use a regional model to improve manufacturing efficiency as the initial core of the ERIP model, which was subsequently transferred across the North Sea Region.