LAUDS Academy

LAUDS Academy is a free, open training programme on sustainable urban manufacturing, built and taught by the practitioners, researchers, and factory operators of the LAUDS Factories European network. Whether you manage a production space, work in manufacturing, or are building a local production business, you will find tools and methods you can put to work immediately. All content comes from people running these spaces today — no generic training, no theory detached from practice.

The curriculum of LAUDS Academy covers the full operational and strategic range of running a sustainable, open, and digitally-connected production facility.
For space managers and entrepreneurs, dedicated modules address collaboration maturity in collaborative and distributed laboratories and poroduction environments, co-design methods aligned with New European Bauhaus values, Living Lab approaches from active European factory sites, and frameworks for assessing the readiness of open technologies for integration into local manufacturing ecosystems.

Video Pills

The LAUDS Academy video pills cover the core knowledge you need to understand, run, and improve a sustainable urban production space.

From grasping the LAUDS framework and assessing your own space against it, to documenting hardware projects for reuse and collaboration, tracking production progress with the LAUDS Blueprint, and generating Digital Product Passports for your manufacturing jobs — each module is short, focused, and built for immediate application. You will also find tools for monitoring machine energy and resources in real time, evaluating the openness maturity of new technologies, and strengthening collaboration within your team and across partner projects.

What does LAUDS mean

  • Title

    What does LAUDS mean: Local, Accessible, Urban, Digital and Sustainable

  • Teaching staff

    • Enrico Bassi, SUPSI

  • Description

    The first pillar of the LAUDS Academy is understanding the overall concept behind the LAUDS project. Discover through this video lesson what is the meaning of LAUDS and how you can assess your makerspace to be more LAUDS. You will check different real-word examples and at the end of each section you will have the possibility to do a practical exercise and discover how you can be more local, accessible, urban, digital and sustainable.

  • What you will learn?

    • LAUDS meaning
    • Real-word example of LAUDS Factories or projects
    • How to be more LAUDS

  • Useful links

  • License

    This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Collaboration Maturity

  • Title

    Evaluating and Improving Collaboration in and among projects: Maturity Assessment approach for Makerspace

  • Teaching staff

    • Fouad Sahyoun, GINP
    • Damien Evrard, GINP
    • Jean-François Boujut, GINP

  • Description

    Collaboration is at the heart of makerspace projects, where diverse skills, shared resources, and collective knowledge come together. This session introduces a collaboration capacity maturity model designed to make collaboration more explicit, intentional, and easier to improve. Participants will explore key drivers of effective collaboration within their projects across several dimensions - encompassing all aspects of collaboration - relevant to makerspace environments. The framework helps teams reflect on current practices and identify strengths and gaps, while also forming the foundation for assessment tools developed to support collaboration maturity assessment.

  • What you will learn?

    • Understand the key factors that influence effective collaboration in makerspace projects.
    • Use the maturity model to guide targeted improvements (related to specific areas/categories) and enhance teamwork.
    • Building shared understanding across stakeholders for working together effectively.

  • License

    This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Hardware Documentation

  • Title

    Document your hardware project for localised urban production

  • Teaching staff

    • Julien Colomb, TUB

  • Description

    This cours presents best practices in hardware project documentation. You will be lead through the use of a hardware documentation guide, which will allow your team to produce useful documentation. While open source licenses gives the permission to reuse the work (including distribution and sell), this course focus on practices which enables people inside and outside your team to study, modify, and make the hardware.This course is about leveraging doumentation practices in order to facilitates collaborations and community building.

  • What you will learn?

    • produce useful documentation of your project
    • use documentation as a community building tool

  • License

    This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Open guide for post industrial production

  • Title

    Open guide for post industrial production

  • Teaching staff

    • Pedro Pineda, TMDC
    • Cris Noguer, TAT ARA

  • Description

    This video presents the TMDC 4.0 model, a proposal for urban manufacturing in the twenty-first century. Its aim is to formalise and share an industrial coworking system that has been developed and validated in a real-world context. The model responds to the opportunity to relocate production within urban environments, reducing environmental impacts while recovering material and place-based knowledge.

  • What you will learn?

    • Replicate an industrial coworking space based on TMDC experience
    • Explore the democratisation of access to industrial tools.
    • Examine rigorous spatial design strategies.
    • Understand community-building practices.
    • Focus on operational efficiency as a key element in restoring the value of craftsmanship.

  • License

    This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0

On-site workshops

Hands-on training inside real LAUDS factory spaces across Europe.

On-site workshops bring you into working production spaces where you learn by making. Each session is led by the practitioners and researchers who built and run production spaces. You work in small groups, on real equipment, on real challenges or competence. No slides, no simulations. Just practice, peer exchange, and knowledge you can bring straight back to your own space.

CNC Local Production

Codesign of urban and creative factories