Impulse paper ‚Industrie 4.0: Research and Development Perspectives‘ of the Research Council Industrie 4.0 – How to promote German industry’s competitiveness
Munich, 15 May 2025
With the impulse paper ‚Industrie 4.0: Research and Development Perspectives‘, the Research Council Industrie 4.0 presents a recommendation for research funding in the context of networked value creation. It identifies important fields of action and priorities in order to sustainably secure the long-term competitiveness of Germany as a buisness and production location through Industrie 4.0 by means of targeted measures.
The impulse paper highlights the following areas:
- Competitiveness in the age of sustainable value creation
- Ecosystems for the value creation of tomorrow
- Radical rethinking in engineering: new engineering methods for complex requirements
- The future of industrial work: symbiotic collaboration in cross-functional teams
- Targeted research funding for Industry 4.0 with a focus on practice
Value creation in transition
In order to remain internationally competitive and prevent the migration of value creation out of Germany, it is crucial to expand sovereignty in leading technologies. Industrie 4.0 provides the basic building blocks for far-reaching changes in value creation. High productivity must be achieved in profitable, cross-company business models using Industrie 4.0 technologies. Both engineering in production and value creation processes and the world of work are changing considerably as a result. The transformation process also makes it necessary for product and production systems to be designed together and across domains. Pure digitalisation of work processes is not enough. The aim must be to achieve holistic, optimal modelling of the world of work.
Industrie 4.0 enables completely new business models, but these can only be found to a limited extent in practice. There is a clear need to catch up here, particularly in order to ensure sovereignty in this area and to counter new players originally coming from the purely digital world.”
Harald Schöning (Software AG), Spokesperson Industry of the Research Council Industrie 4.0
Orientation for SMEs and transfer into practice
Research must be geared towards economic, technological and labour-oriented goals. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular need more orientation. Research activities must promote direct transfer into practice. The central role of people, sustainability, resilience, interoperability and technological and strategic sovereignty must be considered together. This will secure the competitiveness of German industry in the long term.
In addition to new technologies, Industrie 4.0 requires innovative business models and a suitable organisation of work processes. Now that many of the technical foundations have already been laid, these issues must be addressed intensively. This requires commitment from industry supported by appropriate research funding.”
Peter Liggesmeyer (Fraunhofer IESE), spokesperson science of the Research Council Industrie 4.0
The impulse paper is based on discussions held in the context of the BMBF’s Industrie 4.0 research conference (24/25 February 2025). At the invitation of the BMBF, the Research Council Industrie 4.0 and other invited guests discussed the future prospects of research funding in the field of networked value creation.
The impulse paper ‘Industry 4.0: Research and Development Perspectives’ (in German) is available for here.
