Industry 4.0 counts 1,2 billion in our country, but 38% of Italian companies declare that they do not know the topic of Smart Manufacturing, a figure that rises to 48% if we talk about SMEs.
To say it is the research of the Observatory Smart manufacturing of School of Management of the Milan Polytechnic, presented at the conference "The digitization of industry: Italy, Work in Progress" which was held at the headquarters of Assolombarda Confindustria Milano Monza and Brianza.
Despite the 38% of industries you declare that you do not know the topics of Smart Manufacturing and although the entrepreneurial fabric is made up of small-scale realities with little maturity of IT solutions, the picture of Industry 4.0 in our country painted by the Observatory report is substantially vital: the 30 % of the companies analysed, in fact, have three or more applications of new technologies to their credit.
Among the most explored technological applications is the Industrial Internet of Things (66% of value), followed by Industrial Analytics, Cloud Manufacturing, Advanced Automation, Advanced Human Machine Interface or Additive Manufacturing.
As mentioned, the Smart Manufacturing market in 2015 in Italy is already worth 1,2 billion euros, a value that represents just under 10% of total industrial investments (10-12 billion euros), driven in particular by large machinery and automotive companies.
For 2016, a rate of growth of 20%, good but insufficient to make up for years behind the more mature international experiences, where national development action plans were born.
The research, which involved 307 Italian companies in 9 sectors relevant to the manufacturing fabric, surveyed around 600 applications of Smart Manufacturing Technologies in Italy in 2016, actually reporting a picture of strong vitality: the estimated growth is 30% compared to 2015, the most widespread are the applications of Industrial Analytics both in support of operational activities such as production and logistics (20% of the sample), and in the management of the Supply Chain (15%).
"Considering the innovativeness of the paradigm, the immaturity of some technologies and the complexity of implementation, in addition to the economic crisis of recent years, the Italian picture of Smart Manufacturing should be read in a positive light", says Alessandro Perego, Scientific Director of the Observatory.
“To accelerate growth – continues Perego – it is first of all necessary to get out of the experimental phase that characterizes most projects and move on towidespread application and extend the projects also to less active sectors such as food, wood-furniture, fashion and above all to medium-small businesses, the beating heart of the Italian industrial fabric”.
Barriers to diffusion
A limit to the diffusion of Smart Manufacturing in Italy appears to be the scarce “digital maturity” overall of companies, with a reduced diffusion of traditional solutions: even if 70% of companies have already adopted standard solutions (such as CAD, PDM and production control systems), less than 30% use more complex management systems (such as Product Lifecycle Management, Manufacturing Execution System and Computerized Maintenance Management System).
The reasons why companies claim to have already adopted Smart Manufacturing technologies are cost reduction and service improvements. Instead, the identified barriers are many: the context, the lack of infrastructure, the outdated systems, the cultural and organizational limits.
On this front, companies are asking the government above all for incentives for the modernization of networks or for new information systems (in 50% of cases), followed by incentives for new machinery for SMEs (46%) and incentives for training courses for large companies (38%).
In fact, there is an alarm related to digital skills in organizations: companies rarely carry out a skills analysis (29% of large companies and 13% of small-medium companies), but when it is done, important gaps emerge that require action of correction in 62% of cases, while in 32% only some figures possess the skills and in 6% the companies recognize themselves as ready.
Startups
The number of globally funded Smart Manufacturing startups is growing 15% for the third year in a row (data complete as of 2014) and total funding rises to over $1,5 billion, with 39% raised by new businesses in the Industrial Analytics space.
Of the 173 startups identified, 60% are based in North America and only 30% in Europe. The US is home to new businesses, with an average funding value five times higher than that observed in Europe ($10 and $2,7 million, respectively).
Despite this, there is no shortage of interesting cases in the old continent and not even in Italy where 20 startups (financed and unfunded) were surveyed ranging from the Industrial IoT ("the Internet of Things Plug and Play" by Alleantia) to Advanced HMI solutions (Experenti Srl) up to Additive Manufacturing (Kentstrapper). In Italy, the startups most capable of attracting funding are in the Cloud Manufacturing area.
