ZEW ICT Survey: Industry 4.0 Remains Almost Unheard of Among German Companies

The political and media hype surrounding "Industry 4.0" continues. Yet when it comes to merging classical production methods with information and communication technologies (ICT), this continues to be a challenge for the German economy. In total, only 18 per cent of companies in Germany are familiar with the term Industry 4.0. Moreover, a mere four per cent of German businesses have already implemented digitalised and networked production processes or have plans to begin doing so in the near future. These are the findings of the latest ICT survey, undertaken by the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). The representative survey, which focuses on the distribution and use of ICT, was conducted among approximately 4,500 businesses in Germany.

Additional central findings from the 2015 ICT Survey in brief:

• The implementation of cloud computing is heterogeneous across sectors, and is used by a total of 20 per cent of companies.
• In total, 78 per cent of businesses consider data security to be a risk factor when implementing cloud computing.
• A total of 25 per cent of firms use high-speed Internet with a minimum Internet connection speed of 50 Mbit per second.
• Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet are being increasingly used in conjunction with conventional computers.
• While 46 per cent of businesses now offer the option of working from home (teleworking), only eight per cent of employees make use of this option.
• More than half of the companies expect to be able to contact at least a proportion of their employees outside of their regular working hours.
• Big data analytics, the analysis of large amounts of data from different sources in real time, is used by a total of 18 per cent of businesses, typically by large companies or businesses in the financial sector.
• In total, 44 per cent of businesses make use of social media in the form of online networks, messaging applications or blogs.

For the 2015 ICT Survey, ZEW surveyed firms from the manufacturing industry as well as from selected service sectors. The results of the survey were stratified and extrapolated to all employees or businesses with at least five employees in Germany in the sectors considered.

For more information please contact

Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Phone 06211235-354, E-mail ohnemus@zew.de