The European manufacturing industry has lost significance in recent years due to the lack of competitiveness compared to other countries with lower costs.
However, this lost competitiveness can be recovered by implementing information technology across the value chain of manufacturing organisations, in order to reduce costs by optimising processes and making them more flexible, and creating smart products to enter the added value services market.
In order for information to flow continuously throughout the organisational layers of companies, it is necessary to define standardised interfaces between the systems managing these layers.