Five for Cross-industry Value Chain Excellence (5FOREXCELLENCE)

Consortium of 5 partner organizations, one of which is Vidzeme Planning Region (VPR), is implementing cluster cross-sector cooperation project “Five for Cross-industry Value Chain Excellence” (5FOREXCELLENCE) which is funded from EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) – “COSME” 2014-2020. Within the project VPR, as a member and international cooperation coordinator of the Latvian high added value and healthy food cluster, will develop this cluster’s management excellence.

In the project evaluation of cluster management and training of cluster facilitators by international experts will be carried out for involved ICT, logistics and food clusters. With the help of cluster development experts, new and/or improved services within the clusters will be planned and developed; experience exchange workshops and international conference will be organized and cluster management excellence strategy will be elaborated. All five clusters will also be benchmarked accordingly to European Cluster Excellence Initiative (ECEI) methodology.

The most important added value of the project will be the enhanced management skills and practices of involved clusters and developed new services, which will help clusters to achieve better results and performance in the long run. A very important innovation of this project is the development of cross-industry (food, logistics, ICT) collaboration, which will enable development of innovative solutions for food logistics and greater ICT integration in logistics and food sectors.

 

Title

Five for Cross-industry Value Chain Excellence

Abbreviation

5FOREXCELLENCE

Lead partner

Latvian ICT cluster (Latvia)

Programme EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) – “COSME”

 

Partners

  • NetPort Karlshamn AB (NetPort) Science park (Sweden)
  • Latvian Logistics Association (Latvia)
  • Vidzeme Planning Region (Latvia)
  • Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications (Estonia)

Objectives

Overall objective:
  • To strengthen management excellence of involved clusters

 Specific objectives:

  • To improve management and performance practices of involved clusters;
  • To enable clusters to provide more professional business services to SME’s`
  • To develop capacities necessary for cross-sectoral and international collaboration;
  • To raise awareness of other local cluster organizations and business networks of benefits of the cluster management excellence approach.

Activities

  • Benchmarking and cluster management excellence certification accordingly to  European Cluster Excellence Initiative (ECEI) methodology
  • Training aimed to strengthen and improve management excellence of involved clusters;
  • Identification and planning of services to be provided to SME’s, to be developed and offered by involved clusters;
  • Dissemination and follow up activities.

Results

  • Enhanced performance management excellence of involved clusters;
  • More Professional business services developed  within the involved clusters;
  • Involved clusters benchmarked for ECEI management excellence labels.

Budget

Total budget: 249 415 EUR

VPR budget: 44 769 EUR

Implementation period

01.01.2015. – 30.06.2017.

Contact person

Kristaps Ročāns

Phone: +371 29753011

E-mail: kristaps.rocans@vidzeme.lv