On the occasion of the 4th edition of the Smart Manufacturing Week, Luxinnovation’s Market Intelligence department presented the first mapping of the manufacturing ecosystem, carried out in close collaboration with the Luxembourg Materials & Manufacturing Cluster and the Digital Transformation department of the national innovation agency.
“Having an overview of companies that have manufacturing as their core business, as well as of companies that provide services or solutions that enable the former to innovate and move towards a ‘smart manufacturing’ approach, is essential,” says explains Sara Bouchon, Director of Market Intelligence at Luxinnovation. “This mapping will make it possible to better monitor the evolution of the ecosystem in order to adjust any actions that may be necessary.”
In total, more than 750 companies are part of the manufacturing ecosystem in Luxembourg: 455 have production as their primary activity and 298 play a role as “facilitators”, as they provide products, solutions or services that enable the transition to smarter and digitalised production processes.
In order to identify them, Luxinnovation has gone far beyond a mere statistical analysis. “To carry out the mapping, it was important to use sources other than the NACE code, the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community. We found that 20% of companies whose main activity is production do not have a NACE code related to industrial activity,” explains Dr Bouchon.
High value-added activities
Almost half (46%) of the companies with production as their core business have less than 10 employees, and 72% less than 50%, “but there is a real focus on high value-added activities”, says Mohammed Toumi, Market Intelligence Analyst at Luxinnovation. “85% of companies with more than 50 employees have their production sites in Luxembourg. In addition, 22% of companies carry out design activities here, for engineering as well as research and development.”
The shareholder profile of these companies is mainly national, since almost half (46%) of the companies with production as their primary activity are owned by Luxembourg entities or individual shareholders. 35% are directly or indirectly controlled by foreign owners (legal entities and individuals). The remaining 19% are either independent companies or entities for which the shareholding data are not known.
Concerning the “enablers”, suppliers of products, solutions or services for Industry 4.0, the range of solutions is mainly focused on cloud computing (34% of companies), digital transformation (27%), ERP systems (26%), cybersecurity (22%) and web development (21%), bearing in mind that a company can obviously offer several services. “Many solutions enabling production companies to move towards smart manufacturing are already available on the national market,” notes Dr Bouchon.
IP: 15 champions
In terms of intellectual property, 1,485 patents or utility models have been filed over the past 10 years by 61 entities – mostly manufacturing companies. Although almost all (91%) of these patents have been filed by 15 companies, a few start-ups stand out, such as Anisoprint, Leko Labs, OQ Technology and Motion-S.
This smart manufacturing mapping is available online in the form of an interactive dashboard.