The Engineering Roadmap of the Research Council Industrie 4.0
This Engineering Roadmap of the Research Council Industrie 4.0 has been developed by a strategy com-mission, set up specifically for the preparation of the roadmap together with the Research Council. The aims of the roadmap include offering orientation for the work of the Research Council, providing a “common thread” for expert reports, impulse reports and other formats, and simplifying communication and thematic coordination with the Plattform Industrie 4.0 and the federal ministries involved. The roadmap addresses a period of 10 years (starting in 2024), which is divided into three main periods. In terms of content, four main topics are distinguished. The thematic blocks arranged in the resulting structure address important research questions which, assuming that certain developments will occur, follow on from one another in a meaning-ful way. The thematic blocks form a framework for specific research priorities that can be addressed within the specified period. The research priorities still need to be developed as a refinement of the thematic blocks and detailed up to the level of specific research work. It can be assumed that this refinement pro-cess can be carried out more reliably for research topics that are near term than for research topics that are set far in the future. The arrangement of the thematic blocks describes the chronological order of the re-search work, i.e. not the time at which the results will be available. Due to the fact that this is a research roadmap based on the research focus of the Research Council, it does not contain any information on when the research results will be implemented in practice.