"CLAIM will provide a new sheet metal welding technology to enhance and strengthen the ability of European SMEs to increase their research and innovation capacities. The project will bring the participating industry partners closer to the research and academia community by developing and integrating a new welding process in their corresponding machines in cooperation with research institutes. The new process is based on a common plasma welding process which will be stabilised by laser radiation. Because of the stabilisation effect from the emitted laser radiation the SME users will be able to achieve the requirements of the industry to faster and energy efficient production without compromising in quality. Therefore they will become more competitive to compete in the global market. The CLAIM process will reduce process times, enhance the manufacturer’s flexibility to produce customized products and as a result of the higher feed rates the heat input will be low which leads to degrade heat distortion and reduces the reconditioning. To achieve a high degree of efficiency, off-line programming methods will be applied to the corresponding machines of the SMEs. The integration of the process and offline programming will reduce setup-times significantly. A benchmarking system will offer the ability to detect the best processing strategy dependant on the work piece geometry, which will reduce non-productive processing times. In the CLAIM project the new technology will tackle common and complementary plasma welding problems and will demonstrate a clear exploitation potential for the SMEs."