The context

 

The European Commission wants to help European industry, at any level, to make a better use of digital technologies. This is very important for the competitiveness of Europe, and is complementary to the effort to build a true Digital Single Market.

There are already many ongoing initiatives at national and regional level about digitisation of industry; there is however a risk that these initiatives remain below the scale needed to make the whole European industry benefit.

During the course of 2015, Commissioner Oettinger met key industry leaders, representatives of national initiatives and of industry, employers and union associations in order to start defining the basic building blocks of an overall strategy for digitising European industry.

On November 23rd a working level meeting has been held to better understand which actions should be undertaken by the key actors involved in the initiative: European Institutions, social actors, EU Member States and national initiatives, academia and industry.

The objective of the workshop was to propose concrete actions needed for a wider digitalisation of industry, building upon the existing national and regional initiatives which will be the foundation of the European action plan, and to identify the specific contributions and role to be performed by all the involved stakeholders.

From the web page   https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/digitising-european-industry-external-stakeholders-group-meeting  you can download all the information about the workshop, including the report, the presentations and the background documents.

The next steps

 

Every interested stakeholder is invited to use this web page to submit constructive comments in order to help in the definition of the “Digitising European Industry” strategy.

You are invited to address one or more of the four strategy pillars, keeping into account the key questions which were used to structure the discussion during the workshop.

 

Pillar 1: Digital innovation hubs - enabling access to latest digital technologies and expertise

- What should a "digital innovation hub" offer to be a one stop shop for any industry? How can they offer support for deploying digital technologies and for financing the necessary investments?

-  What are the challenges and barriers of adoption of digital technologies by industry? Which help do SMEs and mid-cap companies need (users and suppliers)? How to motivate them to get in touch with a digital innovation hub?

- How to stimulate regions to set up digital innovation hubs and how can they be financed? How can this work together with commercial offers of technology suppliers? How to network existing (and future) digital innovation hubs?

- What should be done at EU level / member states / regions /academia / industry / social actors?

 

Pillar 2: Leadership in platforms for digital industry

- What types of platforms are needed (vertical and market-based versus horizontal and technology-based)? Which should be the starting points? What type of participants should be attracted? 

- Who develops, operates and runs the platforms? Which are the roles of the various stakeholders (industry, EU, social actors, academia, national inititatives)? How should work be shared between regional, national and European actors?

- How are the platforms to be implemented? Which of the following activities should be preferred?

 - Alliances and consensus building

 - Reference Architectures and implementations

 - Standardisation

 - Marketing of platform activities

 - Financing / incentives for adoption and use

 - Sustainability after the end of public intervention

- Which is the timing of actions? Which is the optimal size and duration of projects?

 

Pillar 3: Closing the digital skills gap and preparing the workforce for the digital transformation

- How can innovation hubs contribute to skills development and re-skilling effort, e.g. through mobilising structural funds?

- Is it worth considering mainstreaming skills development and re-skilling efforts in research projects financed by H2020?

- How does the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs need to evolve in the Industry 4.0 context?

- Does it make sense to exchange best practices on how MS react to the digital transformation of work? How could such a process be defined?

- Which skills are most needed?

- How can those skills be developed in the current workforce?

 

Pillar 4: Smart regulation for smart industry

- How does the legal framework need to be adapted to make applications like autonomous driving a reality? What changes are necessary for rules governing liability of autonomous systems in the various contexts?

- How can the current data protection regime be reconciled with the need of autonomous system to monitor their environment by storing and processing the relevant data? Who owns data generated in manufacturing processes?

- Is our current framework for health and safety at work fit for purpose for the new digitised shop floor where autonomous robots will work alongside and in close proximity of human workers?