Running Projects

AUEB is proud to be a partner in the three-year Horizon Europe FABRIX Project, which aims to improve the textile and clothing (T&C) industry in Europe while enhancing the urban planning of these manufacturing functions. FABRIX, which stands for “Fostering local, beautiful, and sustainably designed regenerative textile and clothing ecosystems,” is funded by the European Union under the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) program in the Industry cluster. This initiative aligns with the values promoted by the New European Bauhaus and addresses critical environmental and social issues identified by The European Green Deal, the Circular Economy Action Plan, the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, and the Industrial Strategy.

Our Expertise and Role
In our role as project partners, AUEB leverages its extensive experience in accelerating circular fashion entrepreneurship through the EU COSME Small-but-Perfectly Formed accelerator and other educational and research programs coordinated by the Research Unit for Sustainable, Circular and Ethical Textiles and Fashion (Fashion Revolution FashTech). Our primary responsibilities include:
Leading the Implementation Phase in Athens and Rotterdam: AUEB is responsible for guiding the implementation of FABRIX in the cities of Athens and Rotterdam. This involves using MANTEL, an innovative and interactive platform that supports local value-chain management for more circular and regenerative urban manufacturing.
Facilitating Co-Creation and Capacity Building: We drive the Co-creation and Capacity Building Program embedded in relational and spatial perspectives. This program is designed to engage policymakers, facilitators, and SMEs to accelerate urban circular manufacturing functions in the selected cities.
Coordinating Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP): AUEB leads the coordination of the FSTP scheme targeted at SMEs and facilitators of the urban manufacturing T&C ecosystems in Athens and Rotterdam. This financial support aims to empower small and medium enterprises and other key stakeholders to participate actively in the project.
Developing the Self-Assessment Circular Tool for MANTEL: We apply our scientific approach to support the development of this tool, which helps measure and enhance circularity within the T&C industry.
Conducting Primary Research for Industry Mapping: AUEB conducts primary research to map the T&C industry in Athens. This research is critical for understanding the current landscape and identifying opportunities for more sustainable and circular practices.

Our Competitive Advantage
AUEB brings a robust academic framework of theory and methodology to the project, ensuring that our contributions are both scientifically rigorous and practically impactful. Our involvement in FABRIX allows us to:
Accelerate Urban Circular Manufacturing: By fostering collaboration and spatial connections, we aim to create a truly localized economy with greater circularity.
Engage Diverse Stakeholders: Our programs are designed to include a wide range of stakeholders, from policymakers to SMEs, ensuring comprehensive and inclusive progress.
Promote Socially Just and Aesthetically Pleasing Urban Contexts: We strive to re-situate manufacturing in a way that is not only efficient and sustainable but also enhances the beauty and social fabric of urban areas.
Through our participation in the FABRIX project, AUEB is committed to advancing the textile and clothing industry's sustainability and circularity, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future for urban manufacturing in Europe.

Join Us in Shaping the Future of Urban Manufacturing
AUEB invites the academic and student audience to join us in this transformative journey. By participating in FABRIX, you will gain insights into cutting-edge sustainable practices, contribute to meaningful research, and be part of a project that aims to redefine the future of the T&C industry in a socially just and environmentally sustainable manner. 
For more information please see www.fabrixproject.eu   
Sign up for the newsletter on the official website to stay in touch with our progress, 
And please follow @fabrixproject on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. 

Research Centre for Sustainable, Ethical & Circular Fashion and Textiles (FRFashtech)
Supervisor: Zafeiropoulou Fiori A.

Modern logistics management is responsible for planning, controlling, and implementing the product, service and information flows among the nodes of a supply chain network. For 2018, the total logistics industry costs were calculated to the staggering amount of $1,700 bn and $9,044 bn for EU and worldwide, respectively. Despite the crystal-clear necessity for effective integrated logistics management, it is noteworthy that the common practice for logistics decision-making relies on the fragmentation of processes in discrete stages that are optimized individually as isolated subproblems. The decision-making process becomes myopic, inelastic and often ineffective, but unfortunately, it has been the way to go in the absence of a practical and effective way to tackle integrated logistics optimization problems. However, recent technological advances allow us to model and study more and more integrated logistics problems as NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. Integrated logistics problems combine the basic transportation operation with upstream or downstream operations (production, inventory, distribution, etc.). HybOpt focuses on the identification of complex problems with tangible effects on real life logistics applications. The objective is to develop novel hybrid optimization methodologies based on the synergy of metaheuristics and exact methods (matheuristics) to tackle industrial scale problems. Finally, we aim to explore the new and exciting research direction of artificial intelligence (AI) fueled optimization methods. The “holy grail” of this emerging research stream is to combine the model agnostic and model-based conflicting natures of AI and OR, respectively. Concluding, the research project aims to develop modern optimization algorithms for realistic scale integrated logistics problems of practical importance. The ultimate goal is to boost research activity towards realistic and impactful problems and new methodologies that exploit the current technological advances. A suitable team is formed to ensure the successful implementation of HybOpt.

Research Projects to Support Faculty Members & Researchers ΙΙ, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI - ELIDEK) and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT)

Period: 04/2022 - 10/2025

Deliverables:

D.1. Literature Review

D.2. Mathematical Models

D.3. Hybrid Exact-heuristic Algorithmic Schemes for Integrated Logistics Problems

D.6.a. An adaptive memory matheuristic for the set orienteering problem

D.6.b. The cyclic production routing problem

D.6.c. Euro2022-An adaptive memory matheuristic for the SOP

D.6.d. Euro2024-A GRASP metaheuristic for the last-mile Vehicle Routing Problem with Delivery Options

Operations Research & Decision Systems Research Center (ORDeS)

Coordinator: Zachariadis Emmanouil

The rapid growth of the digital economy and digitalization and the slower speed with which the ethical and socioenvironmental guidelines for the use of new technologies are being developed is an unfortunate truth and a contrast that can and should be addressed. The unique features and educational affordances of technologies pose new challenges for conducting learning and teaching research in ways that adequately address these issues. The European Commission (EC) recently published its proposal for a new ten-year research funding program, Horizon Europe, which relies heavily on language of co-creation. This choice is justified by “declining trust in institutions and a rise of desire for transparency and a greater degree of participation,” which are understood to “have driven a shift towards exploring and implementing means by which the governance of science and research is more democratic, accountable, and transparent” (The Democratic Society 2018, 17). In a similar vein, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) acknowledges that “many societal concerns about the applications of science and technology appear to arise in conditions where the scientific evidence appears to be persuasive, but not complete, yet the socioeconomic implications and the appropriate policy solutions from a broad societal perspective are much less certain.” To tackle such uncertainty, the organization argues that “it is a critical issue for governments to find effective ways of consensus building ... as well as fostering public engagement” (OECD 2015, 251).

REED aims to contribute to the above calls for action and argues that the study of technology has a double importance because it is both a major catalyst in the evolving knowledge in our society and an intricate part of societal development affected by social and ethical values. Primary goal is to empower students/trainers to become better informed “technological citizens” and to participate in the ongoing conversations concerning the impact of new technologies on the ways we live and work. It is imperative to provide powerful tools to students and trainers in order to help them make the most out of our technological achievements and deal with competing values and ethical issues connected to the actual and potential influences of technology in society.

Through our expertise and experience with complementary technology/education EU funded projects we realized that academic curricula have still not adapted to current societal demands. We therefore want to accelerate this adaptation by offering a toolkit for the training and certification of academic lecturers in the pressing matters described above, as well as offer them with state-of-the-art content ready to be incorporated in all business and technology-oriented courses

Website: https://reed-project.eu/

Period: 12/2023 - 10/2025

Operations Management and ERP Systems Research Center (OPeR)

Coordinator: Zissis Dimitris

Small-But-Perfect (SBP) COSME 2021 958060 the RC is the Coordinator with 13 partners incl. Bocconi U, WFTO, FTAO, FR, Swedish Fashion Council, Impact Hub co-funded by EU EISMEA COSME. Accelerating small and medium fashion enterprises to transition to circular and sustainable models, accelerate the accelerators’ by working alongside business support organisations to embed circularity, ‘accelerate the policymakers’ by mapping the policy landscape & organizing Policy Dialogues https://www.small-but-perfect.com/

Research Centre for Sustainable, Ethical & Circular Fashion and Textiles (FRFashtech)
Coordinator: Zafeiropoulou Fiori A.

Transparency Manager in the Fashion Industry (TRA-MA) Erasmus+ 2021-1-EL01-KA220-VET-32985 the RC is the coordinator with 5 partners, incl IED, FR, Swedish Fashion Council. create the job profile, curriculum and the package of short courses necessary to become a TRANSPARENCY MANAGER IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY, such as a professional in charge of ensuring sustainable, ethic practices within the fashion value chain. be able to offer data to needed to compile the Fashion Transparency index that are clear, correct and traceable themselves.

Research Centre for Sustainable, Ethical & Circular Fashion and Textiles (FRFashtech)
Coordinator: Zafeiropoulou Fiori A.

Sustainable Fashion HUB the RC is the Coordinator in collaboration with the three national industry associations: the Hellenic Clothing Industry Association, the Thessalian Association of Clothing Industries and the Hellenic Association of Footwear Manufacturer and Exporters, the civil society organisation Fashion Revolution Greece and the social enterprise Social Fashion Factory-SOFFA. Connects, Incubates, Accelerates and Supports actors of the Greek circular supply chain.

Research Centre for Sustainable, Ethical & Circular Fashion and Textiles (FRFashtech)
Supervisor: Zafeiropoulou Fiori A.