SMEs are lagging behind in robotics

“For IEG,” explains Marco Cecchini, Group Exhibition Manager of IEG’s Industrial Division, “the development of A&T within our events portfolio represents a key strategic element in driving innovation and supporting the transition of the manufacturing industry. “With A&T Vicenza, we aim to bring together the most advanced technological solutions — starting with robotics and artificial intelligence — with the dynamism of a region rich in SMEs capable of innovating.”

“We have now,” explains Matteo Faggin, Director-General of the Smact Competence Centre, “reached a decisive moment in the development of artificial intelligence: with the evolution towards agent-based AI and physical AI, the technology is moving beyond the purely digital realm to interact directly with machinery, production lines and complex processes, and our businesses must be ready now. This is why SMACT coordinates the AI Forum section within A&T, a space where we showcase technologies in action and measurable results already achieved by local businesses. The real challenge today is not simply to use AI for personal productivity, but to integrate it structurally at the heart of business and manufacturing processes. The adoption process is complex and requires a systematic approach, but we cannot afford to hesitate: the return on investment is not measured solely in terms of operational efficiency; it is a matter of competitiveness and the very survival of the company in the market.”

“In the three-polar global landscape,” explains Alberto Baban, chairman of the A&T Industrial Scientific Committee and of Fondazione Nord Est, “Europe is lagging significantly behind the United States – which dominates the cloud and data centre sectors for data management – and China, which is already at the forefront of physical AI research. In this transition, time is a ruthless and decisive factor: either you are a leader or you are destined to be merely an implementer of technologies developed elsewhere. For our businesses, it is crucial to have an accurate picture of how the global market is being reshaped. The pace of change is so rapid that we cannot simply play catch-up: we need strategic vision, awareness and a precise understanding of these developments to steer manufacturing processes rather than merely being at their mercy.”

Data compiled by the Fondazione Nord Est highlight a wide range of applications for artificial intelligence. The most common uses in manufacturing companies relate to information and text extraction (72.7 per cent), speech transcription (37.8 per cent) and the generation of multimedia content (36.1 per cent), whilst predictive and operational applications, such as data analysis via deep learning (18.4 per cent), decision-making support (14 per cent) and autonomous machine movement (5.4 per cent), remain in the minority. Consequently, at the level of business processes, AI currently supports marketing and sales (28.7 per cent) and administration (21.1 per cent), whilst in production processes the scale gap is marked: only 10.4 per cent of small businesses use it in production, a figure that rises to 32 per cent in large industries.