Digitisation - Standardisation

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.​​​​

The Europe 2020 strategy acknowledges the key role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to enable the European Union to achieve its ambitions for 2020.

In this context, aspects relating to Cybersecurity, Big Data and the Internet of Things are the priorities of the European Commission's road map, which aims to commission standardisation programmes that guarantee their development and extensive use under the necessary conditions of interoperability, connectivity, and security, preserving the privacy, personal data and neutrality of the network.​

An ambitious standardisation programme has been commissioned at UNE to facilitate the implementation of technological infrastructures that will enable a new urban service management model to be developed based on efficiency, sustainability and resilience.

These standards contribute to organising the new city models and to setting out the rules required to produce a more specific definition of the different components comprising a smart city. They do this by responding to the social participation needs of communities and the need to provide truly relevant quality services to resolve public issues, improving the quality of life of citizens and visitors.​

The present and future of the management of building and civil construction works involves the use of BIM Building Information Modeling. This is a collaborative work methodology that uses a 3D digital model with a broad range of metadata. It is estimated that the use of the BIM could reduce the costs and the carbon footprint of the construction and use of the built environment by 20%.

In a global environment and with an extremely high amount of data associated with each object, it is strategic for the industry to have open standards of reference, maintaining an exportable and compatible common language. In this way, it is possible for the different agents involved (customer, planners, builders, managers) to share the information on the project.