The scope of the project was the creation of a Mediterranean web-information node for the SMEs in the food, textile and hotel sectors. An interactive and multilingual informational system was developed to support SMEs in improving their competitiveness by the adoption of the prevailing environmental policies and practices. The principal objective was to provide SMEs with up-to-date tools and access to environmental information customised for their specific needs.

The web-based system aims at supporting SMEs in:

• assessing their legislative and technological performance,
• benchmarking their environmental performance,
• introducing technological measures and interventions,
• adopting "good practice" guidelines for improving environmental performance, and estimating the potential cost or benefit of the suggested interventions.

The project resulted in the development of two independent service applications for Environmental Performance Benchmarking for the two sectors:

• The Textile Industry: Assafaa
• The Hotel Sector: BayaTex

The textile/clothing (T/C) sector is an important sector in most South Mediterranean Countries, contributing substantially to local economies, as well as to the overall North-South commercial co-operation. In the Western World this industry has undergone considerable changes over the recent years, moving from the "classical manufacturing" business to a "high tech" one. Business Processes have been completely revised, introducing networked supply-chain management. Web – based B2B e-commerce is rapidly prevailing over traditional "rigid" EDI. IT deployment can significantly improve competitiveness, however the first and most important step is the ability of SMEs to correctly assess their competitive positioning, in terms of subjective and reliable Benchmarking, and whenever necessary to train their teams appropriately and continuously.
Not many of these new developments have found their way into the TC industries of the Mediterranean area.
E-MED-TEX-NET aims at assisting this innovation transfer process through training, networking and on-line benchmarking procedures.

The project is divided into three distinct inter-related sub-projects:

• SP1: Inter-enterprise Knowledge Base
• SP2: Evaluation and Benchmarking System
• SP3: Training on Information Systems and Tools

See the "Communique de Presse" issued at the end of the project.

Medressa II was an accompanying measure in the Information Society Technologies Programme in the Framework Programme 5.
It was meant to accompany:

• The ongoing EC activities on dissemination of RTD results
• The International Co-operation within the IST Programme
• The Euro-Mediterranean Information Society Steering Committee
• The upcoming EUMEDIS Programme

The main tangible results of the Medressa II project were:

• 26 Partnership Event in 7 South Mediterranean Countries
• A web-site containing all presentations given at the events, all contact data of the companies and institutions involved and a collection of reports about the target countries.
• The IT-Network and Brokerage Facility on the web where companies can register with their products or services.

The aim of HERMES was to accompany the IT Nodes activities of the EC in the Mediterranean Partner Countries  by developing demonstrators and organising workshops in the selected areas, i.e., Technologies for Business Processes and Smart Organisations, Electronic Commerce, Multimedia content and tools and WWW technologies.
Five Workshops and Training Sessions were held during the project, with a total number of trainees of 160:

1  METU Culture and Congress Centre, Ankara:  June 10 and 11, 2002
2  Royal Scientific Society, Amman: Amman Cultural Heritage 2002: Multimedia for Cultural Heritage, Sep 29 to Oct 2, 2002
3  National Technical University of Athens: July 10 and 11, 2003
4  In co-operation with the Academy of Scientific Research & Technology in Cairo: October 18and19, 2003
5  In co-operation with the Centre National d'Informatique in Tunis: January 19 and 20, 2004

MedAqua was an ‘accompanying measure’ to provide services specifically to other ongoing INCO-MED projects in the water area and generally to all institutions involved in this subject in the South Mediterranean region.

In order to bring projects closer together MedAqua accomplished a number of dissemination and communication activities on different levels:

1. One Joint Conference (public) was organised.
2. A "Roadmap" document at the end of the project defined the future needs of research in this area, based on the result achieved in the ongoing projects.
3. A WEB forum was created for a) private discussions among the relevant projects and with a repository of documents and reports the projects want to exchange among themselves; and b) public news and bulleting board to report on the scientific achievements and relevant events.
4. A number of local activities were carried out by the Mediterranean partners: primarily through seminars at the participating universities but also through lectures within the relevant educational courses.

Trading in all South Mediterranean Countries is still very much unbalanced, resulting in significant trade balance deficits. To change this situation requires both political agreements and much more practical assistance in finding trade partners and customers. Communities need to be created for companies and individuals where people get to know each other, find relevant information and exchange thoughts. With the wide-spread availability of the Internet such communities need no longer physical meetings but can be developed much more efficient as virtual meeting places.

The aim of Medina was to develop concepts and tools for the business world allowing efficient and easy publication of market information and company profiles, embedded in a framework of virtual communities amongst users. The resulting system is primarily targeted at associations and chambers of industry ands commerce, including a specific module for the management of their own organisation.

The aim of MEDRESSA was to bring companies  and organisation from Europe and the South Mediterranean Countries (SMC)  closer together through a sustainable and mutually beneficial process of technology transfer. During the last decade European R&D has developed a huge amount of research results in the area of Information Technology and MEDRESSA aimed at disseminating these results to the SMCs and foster the uptake by establishing the necessary links and relationships between the developers and the users.

In particular, MEDRESSA

• Analysed the relevant industrial sectors in selected SMCs together with their market and company structures
• Identified companies and organisations in these sectors that have an expressed need for IT solutions
• Identified and analyse the relevant existing results taking into account all the analysis work that has been already performed (PROSOMA, etc.)
• Established direct relations between the European result owners and the SMC users through workshops in the SMCs

Industrial manufacturing in Middle East is still  behind Europe and the Western World, both in quantity and quality. Despite the tremendous market potential of an area of several hundred million inhabitants, local industry will continue to fight a loosing battle against imports as long as it does not bring its quality standards to an equal, international level. The advantageous labour rates of the local industry will only bear fruits on the competitive global markets if no doubt remains about the quality of the goods produced. Stable quality of products can only be achieved through rigid adherence to well-defined control procedures, covering the entire life-cycle of products, from raw material to after-sales services. While the introduction of overall Quality Management is a first step that has to be followed by an integrated control system for the production processes, the success of Quality Management depends on its acceptance by the work force. To bring such changes in the working culture about requires intensive creation of awareness and training.

The main achievements of the project were

1. The development of a modular Quality Management and Control software running under Windows95 / NT, US and Arabic version. The software provides a bilingual system with an Arabic interface to all data-input modules required on shop-floor level and an English report generator and interface for all management and diagnosis modules. An interactive Arabic tutorial software was also developed together with System documentation and User Manual.

2. A fully installed system at a paper manufacturer in Egypt (Pyramids Paper Mills).