Co-summit offers vision of manufacturing future

The German capital is getting ready for the Co-summit 2015. The 7th annual conference, organised by ITEA and ARTEMIS, focuses on a revolution that will radically alter the face of industry throughout Europe and beyond over the next few decades.

The theme of this year’s two-day Co-summit – smart industry or Industrie 4.0 – helps to underline the centrality of software in the European industrial landscape, with software not only a key enabler for success and a competitive differentiator, but also a connector of the different elements throughout the value chain, according to the organisers.

ITEA (the EUREKA Cluster on software-intensive systems and services) and ARTEMIS (a non-profit association on embedded and cyber-physical systems) say that the 4th industrial revolution, that is the merging of the real world with virtual worlds, is helping to revive production in Europe and software innovation is pivotal to competing successfully in the manufacturing and process industry.

Speaking ahead of the conference, Heinrich Daembkes, president of ARTEMIS Industry Association, said that in order to achieve the European Commission’s target of boosting manufacturing’s share of value added in Europe from 15% to 20% by 2020, “we need to adjust the focus of our R&D efforts more towards the relevant new drivers: systems design and software. This will be decisive in our ability to compete with the other regions of the world.”

Adding his thoughts, Rudolf Haggenmüller, chairman of the ITEA board, underlined the need for Europe to “take a more global approach to software innovation, one that includes customers and end users and which addresses product and service innovation. Smart industry needs smart people.”

The conference will also include the participation of Dr Herbert Zeisel of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research; Khalil Rouhana, director for Components & Systems, DG CONNECT at the European Commission; and Bruno H Moor, chairman of the EUREKA High Level Group. The Co-summit’s keynote speech will be given by Dr Jutta Schneider, director for eDrive and software technologies at Daimler.

The Co-summit 2015 will take place on 10-11 March at the bcc Berlin Congress Center and Horizon 2020 Projects will attending the conference, with coverage in the next edition of Portal, due to be published in April.