Teaching Factories Competition 2025 Call

Teaching Factories Competition 2025: Call for companies’ challenges

EIT Manufacturing invites companies to propose relevant industrial challenges for higher education and vocational education and training (VET) students to form Solver Teams (4-6 members) and ideate solutions to those challenges.

The Teaching Factories Competition (TFC) is a collaborative initiative bringing together corporates and academia across Europe through business challenges. By fostering academia-industry partnerships, the TFC aims to foster the development of dynamic solutions to industrial challenges.

Please note, there will be two calls for Solver Teams that will open in March and April 2025. Learn more here.

Thematic scope

Manufacturing companies are invited to frame their business challenges on the following topics and subtopics of the Teaching Factories Competition 2025:  

• Advanced Manufacturing: Additive Manufacturing, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing, Human-Machine Interface, Robotics & Automation.
• Green and Sustainable Manufacturing: Circular Economy, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Zero Defect Manufacturing.
• Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Smart & Intelligent Manufacturing, Advanced Simulation & Digital Twin Technology, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain Technology, Big Data Analytics, Web 3.0 & Metaverse.

Companies are invited to submit up to three challenges from different subtopic categories and benefit from a new perspective of students joining forces to create novel solutions.

Who can apply

To be eligible for the call, the Companies should meet the following criteria:

• must be a public or private enterprise—small, medium, or large—including social enterprises, associated with the manufacturing sector. Companies must be recognised as legal entities under national, EU, or international law, with the ability to exercise rights and obligations in their name.
• must be established in one of the Member States (including overseas countries and territories, (OCTs)) or Associated Countries to Horizon Europe.
• The challenge shall align with the selected topic and the EIT Manufacturing Strategic Agenda promoting innovative developments in the manufacturing industry.

All EIT Manufacturing partners are eligible to apply, nevertheless, an entity does not need to be nor become an EIT Manufacturing partner to apply for and participate in the competition.