According to the results of the Smart Manufacturing Observatory, conducted by the School of Management Polytechnic of Milan, smart technologies in Italy are worth 1.2 billion euro. To this estimate – which considers the projects carried out by Italian companies in the Industrial Internet of Things, Industrial Analytics and Cloud Manufacturing – a share of 20% must be added, considering activities such as consultancy and training, update and provision of infrastructure. 66% of the market is represented by projects of Industrial Internet of Things, which are worth 790 million euro, followed by Industrial Analytics (23%, 270 million euro) and Cloud Manufacturing (10%, 120 million euro). In a period mainly characterized by pilot projects, the signal of the embryonic stage is the fact that 30% of the market is distributed in the system integration area, while 28% covers the purchase of hardware (sensors, IT systems, etc .), 22% software (software and licenses) and only 20% is related to the services. A survey, conducted on 307 Italian companies from 9 relevant sectors for the manufacturing (including the household appliances industry), has counted about 600 applications of smart manufacturing technologies in Italy in 2016: the estimated growth is equal to 30% compared to 2015. The most common applications include Industrial Analytics in support to production and logistics (20% of the sample) and in support to the supply chain management (15%); the adoption of Cloud solutions and Industrial IoT solutions is equally good (respectively 20% and 16% of the sample); among the less common technologies there is the Advanced HMI (15% of the sample). If we consider the international scenario, in addition to a general growth for all technologies, the most significant increase in the IT area is visible in the Industrial Internet of Things applications (+46%), which also drive Industrial Analytics and Cloud projects. In the area of the operational technologies, the Advanced Automation is having a boom (+169%) due to the strong interest on the collaborative robots, but also the Additive Manufacturing is very vital.
