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Goal, self-perception and activities of the platform
Companies, their workforce, trade unions, associations, science and politics have joined forces in the platform to promote the digital transformation of manufacturing in Germany.
The platform's partners see Industrie 4.0 as a key opportunity to strengthen the competitiveness of Germany as a production location. For them, digitalisation is a process of society as a whole, which can only be successful in dialogue.
Platform Industrie 4.0 promotes the development of Industrie 4.0 in Germany by:
developing pre-competitive concepts and solutions and putting them into practices (to be found in the online library)
supporting companies with recommendations for action, information and use cases for practical application (for example, in the Industrie 4.0 map with more than 350 use cases and participation in the SME Transfer Network)
feeding their ideas into the international Industrie 4.0 discourse and participating in international standardization processes (through more than ten international cooperations)
Structure of the platform
The platform is steered and led by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action as well as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and high-ranking representatives from industry, science and the trade unions. Experts from business, science, associations and the trade unions develop operational solutions together with representatives from various federal ministries in thematic working groups.
The groups look at future-related issues in the areas of standardisation and norms, security of networked systems, legal frameworks, research, working arrangements and business models. The steering committee, which includes business representatives, develops a strategy for the technical implementation of the working groups’ findings. Through international cooperation, the Platform Industrie 4.0 contributes its findings to global discourse and promotes standardization as well as the cross-border exchange for digitization in production.
The composition of the platform’s management team and an overview of the companies and organisations represented on the platform can be found.
History of the platform
Industrie 4.0 is one of the future projects adopted in the „Action Plan High-tech strategy 2020“.
The Federal Government thereby adressed the rapid social and technological development in this area and put structures for cooperation between all actors of innovation in Germany.
The working group Industrie 4.0 set up by the Research Union Economy - Science of the BMBF shed a light on the requirements for a successful start into the fourth industrial age. In October 2012, the working group handed over its report entitled "Implementation of recommendations for the future project Industrie 4.0".
The associations BITKOM, VDMA and ZVEI - they account for more than 6,000 member companies – acted on the suggestion of a continuation and further development of the project Industrie 4.0 and in April 2013 concluded a cooperation agreement to run – in the form of an ideal thematic cooperation beyond association boundaries – the Plattform Industrie 4.0. The launch of the platform was officially announced at the Hanover Fair 2013.
In April 2015, the Plattform Industrie 4.0 was expanded - more actors from companies, associations, unions, science and politics were added.
