High Value-Added Industry

It is widely acknowledged that industry, namely the manufacturing industry, is crucial to Europe, as it provides direct and indirect employment to tens of millions of people, while generating, in general, high added value in produced goods – obtaining a large share of investment in research, development and innovation, and originating more than 80% of EU exports (MANUFUTURE Vision 2030).  

Europe went through a long period of deindustrialisation, starting around the year 2000, which led to the reduction of the manufacturing industry’s contribution to European GDP and to high job losses. 

However, in recent years, there has been a reversal of the decline in the EU manufacturing industry, with significant growth rates in terms of the industry’s share of total added value, employment and labour productivity.  

It is vital to maintain the recovery of the manufacturing industry in Europe. It is generally accepted that the European economy will lose competitiveness and will not generate new jobs without a solid and modern industrial base, supported by new knowledge and technologies, and the creation of start-ups and new SMEs, according to a new approach to public innovation policy. 

In Portugal, the questions relating to manufacturing industry take on greater importance than in the rest of the EU, given the profound deindustrialisation experienced in the country as globalisation progressed, and the fact that the country is less prepared to carry out a recovery. This is a result of insufficient/inappropriate qualification of human resources, the general low added value of its production, and the insufficient investment made (particularly in the field of research and innovation) – all of them negatively affecting the value of productivity. 

Therefore, it is crucial to restore the country’s level of industrialisation to values similar to, at least, the average of the EU countries, investing in a high added value, resilient and sustainable industry, in line with public policies that have been developed by the EU. 

Since its establishment, INESC TEC perceives the manufacturing industry as one of the main areas of research, development, and innovation activities, carrying out hundreds of R&D and technological transfer projects – the majority with key national and international partners, either institutional or corporate. Several of these projects led to important contributions to the pursuit of public policies aimed at the industry’s progress.  

INESC TEC is very committed to taking part in Portugal’s re-industrialisation effort, particularly by contributing to a significant increase in the added value of what is produced in Portugal, as well as to the appropriate qualification of the human resources needed for this complex and difficult task.  

In this sense, INESC TEC intends to demonstrate how it can contribute to the implementation of public policies already defined, or to the design of new ones around high added value industry. To realise this intention, issue 2 of the “INESC TEC Science & Society Magazine “, dedicated to the high added value industry, has been published in the second quarter of 2021. This issue of “Science & Society Magazine” presented a set of articles dedicated to INESC TEC’s expertise in this field, showing some of the contributions that INESC TEC can make to the national re-industrialisation effort. 

One of INESC TEC’s goals is to disseminate science to society, communicating it in a simple and clear way, towards preventing misinformation and contributing to a more informed and prepared society. So, further to the “Science & Society Magazine”, INESC TEC decided to produce and disseminate the podcast and videocast “INESC TEC Science and Society”, which was born directly from that magazine.  

The episodes of the podcast/videocast are organised into seasons of four or five episodes, each season connected to an issue of the magazine. Each episode features the participation of experts from the appropriate area of science, some of them INESC TEC researchers, many of them from other partner institutions/companies. This work, carried out by INESC TEC’s Communication Service, is led by Joana Desport Coelho and coordinated by Artur Pimenta Alves. 

The second season of the podcast/videocast is dedicated to the high value-added industry since the transformation of industry is an important topic that’s still part of the country’s agenda. What’s the best path? Man-machine co-operation? Immersive technologies? Smart factories? Digitising industry? And how should public policies address this issue? These and other questions are explored in the five episodes of the second season of the Science and Society podcast/videocast, which is coordinated by José Carlos Marques Santos. 

This season will have five episodes, each lasting approximately one hour, whose themes are in some way related to the articles published in the issue of the magazine “INESC TEC Science and Society” dedicated to high value-added industry. Each episode features two interviewers (Joana Desport Coelho and an invited person) and three panellists (one of whom, at least, external to INESC TEC). 

The first of the five episodes in this season will address the issue of high value-added industry, science, technology, and public policies. It emphasises the pressing need for Portuguese industry to evolve in the value chain, discussing the importance of investing in innovation and in mastering the development of new and innovative products, while pointing out the role that companies and institutions in the scientific and technological system should play in this regard. It i also stresses that the connection between public policies and business strategies in the fields of research, innovation and training will be vital to the Portuguese industry, which today faces new and disruptive challenges. 

The second episode looks at the role of the circular economy in a high value-added industry, discussing the concept of circular economy, the basic principles and implications for manufacturing systems and research, ending up by advocating its adoption as a new paradigm. 

The third episode deals with the role of learning factories in the qualification of human resources and in the digitalisation of high value-added industries. It focuses on the concept of learning factories – and their role in the qualification of human resources, and the digitalisation process of industrial companies -, highlighting its importance (through experiencing and learning in almost real environments). INESC TEC’s iiLab is highlighted as a proper example of a learning factory, mainly because of its equipment and the services provided. 

The fourth episode looks at the role of collaborative robotics, immersive technologies, and artificial intelligence in the creation of intelligent companies. It addresses the role of collaborative robotics in creating a work environment with harmonious interaction between humans and machines and discusses how immersive technologies may help people improve their ability to act in industrial environments, in a more effective way and with less cognitive overload – thus foreseeing the emergence of augmented humans, integrating themselves in industrial systems, smarter and more autonomous. It also focuses on the role of artificial intelligence in the improvement of the quality of decision-making at all levels, and in the development of more appropriate analytical models, leading to the implementation of smart manufacturing systems and, consequently, the evolution until the intelligent enterprise, i.e., companies that apply advanced technologies and better practices in agile and integrated business processes, becoming more resilient, profitable, and sustainable. 

Finally, the fifth episode discusses servitisation: how to build a service-based resilience strategy for industrial companies. It presents servitisation as a group of services and products, allowing a manufacturing company to differentiate its portfolio, reinforcing the relationship with the customers, and creating new sources of revenue, more stable and resistant to economic cycles. 

We are convinced that the second season of INESC TEC’s podcast/videocast, dedicated to “High Value-Added Industry”, will clarify all interested audiences about the concepts involved, the role to be played by the various actors in the process of moving Portuguese industry up the value chain, the public policies that will need to be developed to speed up this process, and the contribution that INESC TEC will be able to make to meet this goal. 

We should thank INESC TEC’s Communication Service, represented by Joana Desport Coelho and the technical team that supported her, for designing, organising, preparing, recording and editing this season of the podcast/videocast, and to Artur Pimenta Alves who coordinated the work that made this season possible. 

José Marques dos Santos – President of the CGCI of INESC TEC