Present and future of Industry 4.0 in the automotive supply chain: 2017-18
Teaching & research project coordinated by professor Margherita Russo | Department of Economics Marco Biagi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
tutor: Carlos Chover Villach [BA student]
January 2018
Project outline
The 2017 edition of the Observatory offered several elements to know the enterprises of the automotive sector in Emilia-Romagna.
In the 2018 edition we will propose to all companies the collaboration with the EIDI class, with the aim of contributing also to a specific in-depth study on "Present and future of Industry 4.0 in the automotive supply chain".
An international research group has started to work on this theme within the Oecd project on "Digital and open innovation", in which Italy, Japan, Germany and Poland participate. Information about the project is available online at WPTIP, https://www.innovationpolicyplatform.org/digital-and-open-innovation-project.
The collaboration will involve the entire class of students.
The "Open classroom" meeting to discuss the results of the interviews will be scheduled for the last week of lessons, on 13th April 2018.
Digital transformation is a complex process that involves a range of very different activities, skills and organizations that characterize rapid transformations in the design, production of goods and services (Oecd, 2017). We indicate all these transformations under the generic name of Industry 4.0, but also as Smart factories, the Industrial Internet of Things, Smart industry, or Advanced manufacturing (Davies, 2015). This set of transformations is not rooted to the same extent in all countries and there are differences between industries and within industries. Understanding these differences will provide guidance on which changes are needed, for example in the education and training system, regulation.
By focusing on the automotive supply chain, we want to capture two related strands of analysis: one concerns differences between countries; the other concerns differences between carmakers.
As far as Italy and Emilia-Romagna are concerned, the depth of digitisation varies considerably in the different segments and levels of the automotive chain. It would be important to understand whether this is due to the current transition phase or to a structural character of technology, organisation or market segment of companies. This analysis would help to frame scenarios of the pace of ongoing changes and the impact of digitisation on skills, employability and organisations.
In addition, companies in the automotive supply chain have many interrelationships in other supply chains (we saw this especially for Emilia-Romagna where there are interrelations with the production chain of packaging machinery). In this sense, the case study could make us understand to what extent the digitisation stimulated by car manufacturers needs diffusion in other production chains and in which other segments of production and services.
Another structural fact is that, in Italy, SMEs and micro-enterprises are relevant in the automotive supply chain and the spatial concentration of suppliers is strong, with spill over effects in unrelated supply chains. These effects are also achieved through labour mobility in local/regional production systems.
Finally, in Emilia-Romagna, the spatial concentration of the production of sports and luxury cars (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Pagani) is the result, but also the input, of a double link with the local concentration of suppliers. In this segment of the automotive industry, digitized processes are completed by handmade processes. The integration of several types of skills in the same working environment represents another dimension in the analysis of digitisation processes in all their nuances.
The empirical analysis will pay particular attention to the impact of continued progress in digitisation on innovation processes, on the various segments and levels of the supply chain and on the relationship between car manufacturers and their suppliers.
A comparative cross-country analysis, which will include a survey on Emilia-Romagna companies, will help to improve the understanding of country-specific aspects which would require models and policy measures better adapted to different needs. In general, car manufacturers may not display significant differences in their levels of internal digitisation, but they can rely on different suppliers from different countries with distinct levels of digitisation, also in relation to the production of specific car models or stages of the production process.
Through hearings and interviews with company managers, scholars and experts, we will try to gather ideas for specific analyses.
This is an ambitious but indispensable project to understand how the production structure of the supply chain in the area is changing.
It builds on the cooperation between universities and industry. It is crucial not only in the collaboration on technological and market research projects, but also in the activation of new channels to update the skills of our students, enriching their expectations on future jobs with concrete knowledge. At the same time, it offers the companies involved a new perspective on what is changing in the competences of our university students and on how the supply chain as a whole and its finer productive articulations are changing.
For information on the project, please contact prof. Margherita Russo margherita.russo@unimore.it [059 2056877]