The general objective of the project is to develop an innovative meansthrough which adults, at their place of work & home, and in particular inthe context of an enlarged EU, can be supported in acquiring knowledgeand certifying their skills on 2-D & 3-D Computer Aided Design (CAD) forindustrial applications. The project will thus contribute to a higher level ofinnovation in SMEs across European Member States, this indeed beingnecessary if the whole EU is to remain competitive. The followingspecific objectives and deliverables are planned: A study reportsummarizing the problems faced by workers, in hindering them fromattending life-long learning programmes, focusing in particular on thosebased in industrially-oriented SMEs where innovation and creativityneeds to be exploited ; detailed ‘innovation’ vocational training systemframework developed for overcoming the limitations identified from thestudy report in (a) above, at this stage considered to be composed asfollows: Training material , Courseware ,Case-studies , Course Tests ,CAD Training Hardware & Software , On-site SME Mentoring , euCADForum , euCAD project web site, with a public part providing informationto the general public about the project and its relevance and impact to theEU and a private part acting also as communication and informationsharing/repository tool for the partners to help them in the implementationof the different WPs of the project. Impact: With euCAD’s projectframework and thus deliverables, a number of short and long-termimpacts (see Figure 1) will be expected. To begin with, during the projecttime-frame, a number of SMEs in all partner countries will be motivatedon the benefits of engaging in Life-Long learning courses and in particularon exploiting innovation techniques/tools such as CAD. At the end ofthe project, EU SMEs will have a pool of resources (CD/DVDs & e-Learning) in a range of languages on CAD technology, together withcase-studies to help motivate them on effectively using CAD use for arange of applications. Also, stakeholders in different EU SMEs will becertified in CAD technology through course tests developed in theproject. A number of euCAD hardware/software framework will beinstalled in a number of partner countries for sustainability of flexibletraining and mentoring in CAD technology, beyond the project life-time.An important long-term impact is that a number of design/drawing officeworkers in different European SMEs would have been mentored on theused of CAD technology, with in the long-term these trained workerspassing on their knowledge to others. The euCAD Forum is alsoexpected to raise healthy discussions and knowledge transfer on thetopic of design, innovation and CAD for SMEs even after the projectfinishes. A very important impact is that more stakeholders in EU SMEswill as a result of deliverables and also dissemination activities (includingseminars with SME Associations in different partners countries) becomeinnovative and creative in their work/operations/products. This shouldalso have a positive impact towards improving the EU InnovationScoreboard for new EU Member States. Finally, one must appreciatethat there are around 23 million small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) in the European Union – that is 99% of all enterprises. SMEsprovide over 100 million jobs in Europe and in some sectors account formore than three-quarters of all jobs. SMEs therefore make up thebackbone of Europe’s economy. SMEs thus account for the majority ofnew jobs created, and make an important contribution to achieving theEuropean Union’s goal of more growth and more and better jobs. So thevalue of SMEs to an economically competitive Europe is thereforeenormous. Thus, given that the objective of the project is to contributetowards helping European SMEs exploit CAD technology to help thembecome more innovative and thus competitive.