ERFURT_ More than half of the automotive companies surveyed in Thuringia plan to launch new products this year, and nearly half even plan to enter new business areas. Company executives consider the shortage of skilled workers and rising raw material, material, and energy costs to be the greatest risks for their industries. These are key findings of the new study series AUTOMONITOR Thuringia, which is based on a survey of over a hundred Thuringian companies. The study was initiated by the Thuringian Cluster Management (ThCM) of the LEG on behalf of the Ministry of Economic Affairs; it was conducted by a consortium consisting of the Chemnitz Automotive Institute (CATI) and the Thuringian industry cluster “automotive thüringen” (at). It was an in-depth analysis of the situation and opportunities of the automotive industry in the Free State, updating an earlier analysis from 2017. In the future, this industry monitoring is to be continued on an annual basis; the title AUTOMONITOR Thuringia was chosen for the survey series.
"The high participation rate among Thuringian companies is an indication of the strongly pronounced transformation awareness in the industry,” says Thuringia's Minister of Economic Affairs Wolfgang Tiefensee regarding the results of the new in-depth analysis. "The fact that a full 45 percent of companies are dealing with entering new fields once again shows the enormous adaptability of our Thuringian SMEs. We are taking this dynamic into account, among other things, with the new funding instrument Thuringia Verbund Dynamik, a compact, flexible innovation funding module with a significantly streamlined application process.“ The 102 company representatives surveyed named electromobility and the sustainability of products and processes as the most formative megatrends. According to the survey, Thuringia's three greatest location advantages are its local technological expertise, the qualification of its employees, and close customer contact. The ministry and LEG intend to use the current study as well as the further surveys and analyses within the framework of the AUTOMONITOR Thuringia series to make the automotive industry future-proof together with the companies.
„2017 we subjected the industry to an in‑depth analysis for the first time, which placed us clearly ahead of the wave in a national comparison and shortly thereafter, under the crisis conditions of pandemic, war, disrupted supply chains and energy crisis, we were able to launch successful, tailor‑made economic policy measures on the basis of reliable data“, outlines LEG CEO Andreas Krey the approach. „With the continuous data collection and evaluation within the new AUTOMONITOR series and in view of the pleasantly high willingness of our companies to participate, we will also be able to implement successful economic promotion on a solid data basis in the future.“
The next edition of the AUTOMONITOR Thüringen will be conducted in summer 2023 by ThCM with the involvement of „automotive thüringen“ (at); the results are to be published in autumn 2023.
Background
Few industries are currently undergoing such profound change and innovation pressure as the automotive and supplier industry, which is also one of Thuringia's highest-revenue sectors and therefore of great importance for the economic and technological development of the Free State. The megatrends in the fields of electromobility, autonomous driving, and digitalization are exemplary of the current diverse transformation. With the newly conceived AUTOMONITOR Thuringia series, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and LEG aim to gain detailed insights into the state and future prospects of the Thuringian automotive industry in order to optimize economic policy strategies and support offerings. The first in-depth analysis in 2017 provided important input for the "Automotive Agenda Thuringia" developed and presented in 2018 – a strategy process unique nationwide at that time, which has already been successfully applied in addressing the diverse challenges, especially since 2020. The results of the current in-depth analysis will also be incorporated into measures accordingly, and with the conception of a future regular industry monitoring within the framework of AUTOMONITOR Thuringia, the systematic analysis of the industry's status and opportunities will continue.
Interested parties can find the results of the current update of the in-depth analysis at:
www.cluster-thueringen.de/fortschreibung-tiefenanalyse
