KMU-innovativ: Produktionsforschung
Funds German SMEs' production-research R&D projects, alone or with partners.
Companies and economically active research bodies are funded up to 50% of eligible costs for industrial research, rising to 60% for SMEs; universities and non-economic research institutions can be funded individually up to 100% of eligible expenditure, and non-economic university research additionally receives a 20% project lump sum on top of whatever BMBF already finances. Stage 1 outlines are ju…
The programme backs pre-competitive, high-risk industrial R&D projects in production research -- new manufacturing technologies, product-and-process development, Industry 4.0 digitalisation, resource efficiency, and related fields for the manufacturing sector. Projects can be run solo by one SME or as a consortium with other SMEs, non-SME companies, universities, or research institutes, as long as SMEs perform a significant share of the work and get the primary benefit.
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Guides for this application
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