European Manufacturing Survey

Background

Innovations are crucial for corporate growth and the ability to secure jobs. Innovations can relate to new or improved products, services, production processes, organizational forms or marketing and sales methods. Accordingly, the competitiveness of companies is determined not only by the performance of their products and services, but also by the corresponding production processes. Production costs, delivery flexibility or quality are important success factors here. Various national and international surveys attempt to record the innovation activities of companies, to show differences between individual sectors or regions and to compare different countries with each other. The focus is mostly on measuring research and development and product innovations. To close this gap and to complement existing surveys, the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) developed the survey Modernization of Production in 1993. The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology has been involved in the survey since 2003. The aim is to use a core of questions in all partner countries and thus collect internationally comparable data. This makes internationally comparative analyses possible.

International partners

The EMS is supported by a consortium of 19 research institutes and universities from various European and non-European countries. It is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI). The EMS network currently includes Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. The cooperation makes it possible to prepare information on the use of innovative organizational and technical concepts in the manufacture of products and services, as well as performance indicators such as productivity, flexibility and quality, from an anticipated total of around 4,000 companies in the manufacturing sector for analysis.