Smarter Industry, Smarter Europe
A recent communication from the European Commission entitled “Investing in a smart, innovative and sustainable Industry. A renewed EU Industrial Policy Strategy”, published on September 13th, states that “the future of industry will be digital. Digital transformation is at the core of the ongoing industrial revolution.” Unfortunately, digitization is an area where Europe has been lagging behind other regions such as North America or parts of Asia. Moreover, the situation is very heterogeneous across the European Union, as evidenced by a recent study by I-Com Institute for Competitiveness, presented to the European Parliament in early September. The I-Com industry 4.0 Index on the level of preparedness across EU countries, developed for the purpose of the study and comprising of 13 variables such as adoption of technology, ICT infrastructure, and e-skills, shows large disparities between individual states. What can be done to close this gap?
Industry 4.0. Source: Christoph Roser via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
