Impulse report on shaping the future

In the new Impulse Report “Indus­try 4.0 Research for Shap­ing the Future”, the Research Advi­so­ry Board of the Indus­trie 4.0 Plat­form presents an analy­sis of the sta­tus quo of Indus­try 4.0 research in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and derives a basis for the strate­gic fur­ther devel­op­ment of research activ­i­ties. The impulse report was pre­pared by a group of experts com­pris­ing mem­bers of the Research Advi­so­ry Board and the Indus­trie 4.0 Platform.

Com­pre­hen­sive data was col­lect­ed on research projects over the past ten years that have an Indus­trie 4.0 con­nec­tion and have received fund­ing from at least one of the fol­low­ing four fund­ing bod­ies. The Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research (BMBF), the Fed­er­al Min­istry for Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Ener­gy (BMWi), the Ger­man Research Foun­da­tion (DFG) and the Indus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung (IGF) were exam­ined. Through this deep insight into the cur­rent research land­scape, five the­ses for more tar­get­ed research fund­ing can be derived.

“Basic prin­ci­ples for Indus­try 4.0 have been researched in numer­ous research projects. How­ev­er, in order to make inno­v­a­tive val­ue chains a real­i­ty and to achieve the full tar­get pic­ture of Indus­trie 4.0, there is still a need for inten­sive research activ­i­ties in the inter­ac­tion of large, medi­um-sized and small com­pa­nies and science.”

- Har­ald Schön­ing (Soft­ware AG), Indus­try Spokesper­son from the Research Advi­so­ry Board

Research needs and activities

The results of the impulse report show that the entire spec­trum of top­ics is being con­sid­ered in research. Top­ics such as sus­tain­abil­i­ty are also already being addressed. Over­all, there is a high lev­el of research dynamism and great poten­tial for research activ­i­ties, accord­ing to one of the expert group’s the­ses. The fund­ing pro­grams are shap­ing research activ­i­ties in this regard. In addi­tion, pre-com­pet­i­tive research is ini­ti­at­ed and sup­port­ed by play­ers from sci­ence and indus­try. The expert group sum­ma­rizes this in the next thesis.

Leverage effects through cooperation and visibility of SMEs

Lever­age effects for inno­va­tion poten­tial pro­vide major incen­tives for com­mer­cial enter­pris­es to par­tic­i­pate in research and devel­op­ment col­lab­o­ra­tions between sci­ence and indus­try, the expert group notes in anoth­er the­sis. They allow knowl­edge to be trans­ferred between the coop­er­a­tion part­ners and open up inter­ac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties to build up com­pe­ten­cies that secure the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the com­pa­nies or orga­ni­za­tions involved. Small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs) in par­tic­u­lar can ben­e­fit from the find­ings of cut­ting-edge research through col­lab­o­ra­tive projects with­out hav­ing to raise the nec­es­sary resources and funds on their own. In the con­text of the econ­o­my, SMEs are high­ly vis­i­ble in research, the expert group states in a thesis.

Economic and sociopolitical potential

Cor­po­rate ini­tia­tives, pre-com­pet­i­tive col­lab­o­ra­tions and polit­i­cal sup­port are cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive, inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able econ­o­my — as envis­aged by the High-Tech Strat­e­gy 2025 and the Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples 2030. The com­pet­i­tive advan­tage through uti­liza­tion increas­ing­ly offers eco­nom­ic and socio-polit­i­cal poten­tials, states the last the­sis. How­ev­er, these poten­tials are far from exhaust­ed and so far only a few Ger­man com­pa­nies are able to achieve a com­pre­hen­sive imple­men­ta­tion of Indus­trie 4.0. That is why research will con­tin­ue to be of great impor­tance in the future. In this way, a high speed of inno­va­tion can be ensured via var­i­ous fund­ing mea­sures on dif­fer­ent top­ics and con­tribute to a suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion in practice.