The first isolated, local learning factories have been developed in the 1980s. In the following years, a few learning factories were built up and operated. After an accumulation of learning factories in Europe since 2007, these learning factory operators joined forces to form the first network – the Initiative on European Learning Factories (IELF) in May 2011 when the first Conference on Learning Factories took place at TU Darmstadt. Prof. Eberhard Abele (TU Darmstadt) became president and Prof. Wilfried Sihn (TU Wien) became Vice-President. Due to the internationalization, the IELF transformed to the International Association on Learning Factories (IALF) in 2017. Since then, partners from all over the world such as USA, Singapore and South Africa joined the association.