The Netherlands and Germany take the initiative together with other European partners to significantly accelerate the adoption of Smart Industry among SMEs. In this panel discussion moderated by our chairman Peter Stolk we talked with German and Dutch experts Martin May (Director Technology and Innovation Management at SCHUNK, Plattform Industrie 4.0 ), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Martin Ruskowski (CEO of SmartFactoryKL), Anja Simon (CEO Labs Network 4.0), John Blankendaal (Managing Director of Brainport Industries) and Leo Warmerdam (Executive Director of Holland High Tech) about the opportunities and challenges.
The Netherlands and Germany have a long-lasting cooperation in the field of Smart Industry/Industrie 4.0 for over 10 years. Changing and highly current geopolitical circumstances, coupled with an accelerated outflow of skilled workers in the coming years necessitates a substantial acceleration of Smart Industry adoption.
The outcomes of our panel:
The new reality in the world calls for more European cooperation on safety, technology and innovation, reduction of dependencies and more local/European production. Moreover, we are moving from an ‘economy of scale’ to an ‘economy of networks’ in which we can bring new technology and innovations to the market faster, at lower cost and with less risk. However, this places new demands on our industry. The Dutch are champions in system integration, Germany has a very rich industrial tradition. We will have to bundle these competences?
1. Knowledge production environment
Industry in the Netherlands and Germany is increasingly moving towards low volume/high complexity. Germany has enormous knowledge of high-volume production technologies. We can apply this in a low-volume/high-complexity environment that is increasingly in demand in the Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) and learn from Germany.
2. Working together in the chain
Which model fits the future best? We can learn from the cooperation between Brainport Industries, ASML and Trumpf and Zeiss, among others. Be best in the chain, work smartly together. This does have consequences for data and model sharing, a case that was spoken of is the Smart Connected Supplier Network.
3. Cooperation works!
In recent years, we have worked hard together in joint field labs and projects on data sharing, the digital product passport, digital twins, production automation and robotisation, among others). We (Germany and the Netherlands) are ready to join up with more European countries to accelerate. First that come to mind are of course Belgium, France as well as Italy.
