Four years of ‘Factories of the Future’ in Europe: achievements and outlook

Abstract

In November 2008, at the peak of the financial and economic crisis, the European Commission made a bold proposal, namely to support Europe’s competitiveness in key industrial sectors through research and innovation in public–private partnerships. One of these initiatives, ‘Factories of the Future’, was launched with the aim to improve European manufacturing enterprises’ technological capability in adapting to environmental pressures and in adequately responding to increasing global consumer demand for greener, more customised and higher quality products. Five years on, what are the results of these efforts? The paper tries to put into a historic perspective the efforts of the European Commission to facilitate more networking and innovation within the research community, a stimulation of industrial involvement and investment in research and innovation, as well as to underpin these efforts through targeted policies.

Keywords:

• manufacturing
• R&D
• innovation
• public–private partnerships
• EU framework programme
• European projects
• public funding
• collaborative research
• Factories of the Future

Acknowledgement

The views outlined here are the views of the author alone and do not reflect the official position of the European Commission on this matter.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.