Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - M-Future2015 (Strategic investments in European manufacturing to win global challenges)

Teaser

Manufacturing Industry is the foundation of national and international economies. Manufacturing is critically important to both developing and developed countries. Current globalization – enabled by manufacturing and affecting it – has brought many advantages to new...

Summary

Manufacturing Industry is the foundation of national and international economies. Manufacturing is critically important to both developing and developed countries. Current globalization – enabled by manufacturing and affecting it – has brought many advantages to new developing countries, but also created many large-scale problems in developed countries. By 2025 the majority of production and consumption will take place in developing economies. A new global approach to Competitive Sustainable Globalization could be based on one hand on competitive sustainable global manufacturing, constituted of global manufacturing industries with factories located in countries with competitive advantage, and on other hand on competitive sustainable local manufacturing, focusing on establishing local competitive and sustainable manufacturing industries.

As a coordination and support measure the M-Future Project was aimed to increase the efforts of the EC and the Member States in pursuing the strategic objective of Europe’s reindustrialization and growth during Luxembourg’s Presidency of the Council of the EU (June-December 2015) through the organization of the MANUFUTURE 2015 conference focused on options for strategic investments in European manufacturing.
In order to increase the coordination efforts of the European Commission and the Member States in pursuing this strategic objective during Luxembourg’s Presidency of the Council of the EU (June-December 2015) the organisation of the MANUFUTURE 2015 conference has been proposed with a focus on the strategic investments in European manufacturing that could meet and win global challenges. The event was planned and took place in the second half of Luxembourg’s Presidency of the Council of the EU (in autumn 2015) and was timed so that its outputs could also contribute to the update of bi-annual work programmes of Horizon 2020, COSME and other EU innovation-related funding programmes at the end of their first bi-annual period (2014-2015). In particular the conference aimed to support Luxembourg’s Presidency which has identified EU’s leadership in industrial technologies and the increased investment efforts in R&D and innovation as one of the top priority areas for policy intervention in the field of industrial policy in continuation of the efforts made in that direction already during the previous Luxembourg’s Presidency in 2005.
The main objective of the proposed conference was to identify and endorse new policy instruments, business models, support mechanisms and technologies that could help to strengthen and improve the manufacturing base in Europe given the existing regulatory framework and the constrains that manufacturers face at this critical time for further accessing finance, human resources, skills and knowledge needed to compete and win-in a highly competitive and global market. More specifically, the conference aims to involve in the consultation process over 750 stakeholders (policy makers, business leaders, innovators and academics) representing all manufacturing sectors in the EU27 and to initiate the creation of a multi-stakeholder network “Manufactured in Europe” that could act as an open, informal forum for disseminating the conference outputs and promoting the agenda of the re-industrialised Europe across the social networks of innovation actors in Europe. The conference was structured along three major themes, including the issues related to widening access to finance for reindustrialisation and growth, moving European industry to the higher end of value chains, and creating synergy of support initiatives at EU level and in Member States with increased participation of financial markets. For each theme a list of sub-issues to be addressed by speakers have been identified through a consultation process with the High Level Group of MANUFUTURE 2015 and the Ministries of Economy and Higher Education and Research which have endorsed the initiative of LXI to

Work performed

The report covers the work performed from the beginning of the project (1st December 2014) to its end (31st March 2016). The project is based on three major work pillars:

• Preparation of a conference implementation plan, including a conference programme and a plan for the follow-up actions and outreach activities, by organizing the work of the Conference Organizing Committee: identifying and selecting stakeholders to be involved as speakers, keynote speakers, panel and round-table moderators, preparing a well-timed and structured conference programme, a plan for dissemination and the list of outreach activities;
• Implementation of the conference plan achieving above average (70%) turnout of the confirmed attendees from the key stakeholder institutions (such as national agencies and the EU institutions, European industry associations and technology platforms, high-level expert groups, major technology clusters) and preparing a Conference Position Paper, reflecting the consensus reached at the conference;
• Running outreach and dissemination activities and follow-up events: a) organizing visits for media and conference participants to the technologically advanced manufacturing sites in Luxembourg, b) holding a high-impact promotional events for students and general audience involving science and industry, and c) initiating a multi-stakeholder action (communication) network “Manufacturing in Europe” for cross-linking the innovation actors from different industry sectors in order to maximize the publicity of the proposed event.
The conference has achieved its targets and main objectives by:
• Assessing the level of research and development advancement in the manufacturing industry in Europe in comparison with global competitors by analysing the latest results from the EU R&D and innovation-related funding programmes (such as the Factories of the Future) and the PPP initiatives related to the Key Enabling Technologies (KETs), by taking into consideration regional smart specialization;
• Comparing the performance and complimentary of industrial investments in the manufacturing industry with the focus on the complementarity of different EU funds and financial markets on the reindustrialization of Europe through the investment in human resources, skills and knowledge, analysing different types of investments, new business models, technology venture entrepreneurship models, public funding and state aid policies;
• Reaching consensus with stakeholders on the conditions needed for reindustrialization of Europe within the existing policy framework, including policies on climate change and competitiveness, regional smart specialization, industrial policies related to internal market and the aimed increased contribution of the manufacturing sector to the GDP (up to 20%).
Apart from that, the conference also intended to actively support Luxembourg’s Presidency of the EU and its activities in coordinating EU policies in the field of research and innovation in industrial technologies and to increase the visibility of this Presidency by:
• Involving national policy makers and high-level representatives from the National Authorities responsible for R&D and innovation policy planning and implementation together with high-level experts and representatives from the EU governance bodies in discussing the existing and planned actions aimed to stimulate targeted strategic investments in the European manufacturing industry from multiple sources of public and private funding;
• Involvement of major European technology platforms and industry associations such as the European Technology Platform MANUFUTURE, the European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA), European Engineering Industries Association (ORGALIME) and the Council of European Employers for the Metal, Engineering and Technology-based Industries (CEEMET) in assessing together with other stakeholders complementarities of strategic investments in the manuf

Final results

During the conference the number of discussions, exchanges and presentations made by the participants took place and could serve as a basis for preparation of the set of post-conference recommendations. Although, they do not have the pretentions of being fully complete or generally valid, they provide at this moment in time a sample of reflections, thoughts and ideas on how to develop future industrial policy.

Technology, Research an Innovation in Manufacturing

In the last 50 years the industry has evolved radically, which inevitably changed the research landscape. Industry needs to invest continuously in R&D to stay competitive and to adopt the new technologies. The economic crisis in 2008 was a big draw bag in this respect; 2 million jobs in manufacture were gone lost. The decline of industry GDP from 20% to 15% in Europe shows that more consolidated R&D efforts have to be taken.
MANUFUTURE 2015 presented the latest developments of the “Factory of the Future” initiative. Factories of the future are a truly European approach, joining national, regional and European interests. Europe has to exploit further initiatives like the “Factories of the Future” through enhanced clustering, targeting technology transfer, innovation and value creation for Europe’s industry. One of the priorities must be to disseminate the knowledge, which has been already develop and specifically SME’s should be addressed, since tailored tools and mechanism are required to minimize the disparities existing between SME’s and the latest technologies.
IT certainly takes a crucial role in this respect. Either we are talking about knowledge transfer, digitalization of industry (Industry 4.0) or other IT novelties, it is clear that IT is and will be the biggest enabler for business opportunities, skill developments and future growth.
Unfortunately SMEs still stand behind. We see a lot of competitiveness from non-EU online IT tool, process and platforms, which is a threat not only for the European skillset of SMEs, but we risk losing competitive advantages.
The globalization is changing the way of doing things. Multi-cultural influences paired with new business models are key challenge but also a key opportunity to stimulate creativity. Global partnerships seem to be the key to success. Cross-institutional cooperation in product and service innovation is imperative for business success in advanced technological fields. So it is vital to have a global span of expertize to understand better the requirements and to react accordingly.

Business and competiveness

Europe’s human capital should always be central focus for future policy making. Europe is much more advanced in many areas, either we are talking about social, environmental, energy, healthcare and other regulations, than other continents and this has to be seen as an advantage and not a burden.
The ingredients of successful industry policy making can already be found in many initiative, like the Factories of the Future or others. Entrepreneurial spirit and capabilities are required as a driving force in such initiatives to be successful. We have to foster an embedded culture of innovation and open attitude to collaboration.
ICT is undoubtedly seen as a key enabler for successful industry modernisation. The next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector is driven by four disruptions: the rise in data volumes, computational power, and connectivity, especially new low-power wide-area networks. The digitalisation of all types of services and products are essential in the next industrial revolution, also commonly known as Industry 4.0. For Europe, Industry 4.0 is the opportunity to bring back factories to Europe through efficient and individualised production, investment and business opportunities and achieve the re-industrialisation targets in a sustainable way.
Digitizing Europe’s Industry has to be the priority number one of the European Commission. The digital transformation

Website & more info

More info: http://www.manufuture2015.eu.