20 Feb 2019

DIGITALEUROPE’s Digital Manufacturing Executive Council signs Declaration defining the path for Europe’s global leadership

Today, over a dozen senior executives from the membership of DIGITALEUROPE signed a declaration setting a clear path for the EU’s global leadership in Digital Manufacturing.

The Digital Manufacturing Executive Council (DMEC) represents executives from leading manufacturers and technology companies defining the goals and action plan for the EU to become a world leader by 2025. DMEC have signed and publicly released a Declaration outlining their key goals, concrete actions and targets to measure success.

DMEC applauds the European Commission’s vision and goals at its Industry Days and has heard the call to support these efforts. Harnessing technological enablers such as artificial intelligence, high-performancecomputing, digital twinning and 5G is key to the success of the EU’s manufacturing sector.

They presented their recommendations to both the European Commission and the European Parliament to become a high-level platform for policy makers to consult and discuss the future of the EU’s digitalmanufacturing sector.

Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director-General for DIGITALEUROPE said:

“The EU has many critical success factors for the manufacturing sector to be world class and we need to act with a sense of urgency to take advantage of the opportunities of the digital transformation. The continued leadership of this industry depends on digital to pave the way towards the next generation of manufacturing: Manufacturing 5.0.”

“The lack of digital skills in our workforce remains a serious, but not unsolvable, issue. In the next 5 years, by working together with Members States and companies across Europe, we should have completed retraining 20% of the workforce. Currently an estimated 52% of workers need some form of reskilling. Enterprises in Europe should be providing digital skills training to an additional 5% of their employees. Today, only 21.4% of all European enterprise do so.”

“Technology is an enabler to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, waste and vital resources not only in our manufacturing processes but through the products we are creating. In the next five years, Europe should have saved 26 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by digitising resource-intensive sectors. According to estimates, 15.8 billion can be saved from the electricity sector, 9.9 billion from the logistics sector, and 540 million from the automotive sector alone.”

Declaration on digital manufacturing

Read the DIGITALEUROPE’s Digital Manufacturing Executive Council Declaration

Supporting information on the declaration:

Key goals by 2025

The EU has a regulatory framework that allows the manufacturing sector to lead internationally as well as stimulates the development and deployment of key enabling technologies
The EU has developed a Digital Manufacturing ecosystem that leads on innovation and competitiveness
The EU is generating and enhancing investment in the Digital Manufacturing ecosystem and enabling technologies
The EU is a leader in creating high-value data-driven services and in sharing data across Europe and the world
The EU is continuously reskilling and upskilling its workforce to embrace digital production processes
The EU has accelerated sustainability and green growth through new industrial technology solutions