Building Scenarios for the Future of Manufacturing

Forecasting future scenarios is an approach that enables companies, governments, and countries to interpolate the most important trends unfolding in a certain context to help tackle the uncertainties of a world that is changing ever more rapidly. The future outlook can be influenced by many different variables and it is reasonable to consider different possible scenarios. This chapter briefly describes the scenarios discussed and validated by the National Cluster of Intelligent Factories as some of the most promising to influence and change production systems. The work is based on the analysis of various trends from economic, social, technological, and environmental dimensions that have been clustered. The expected influence on the manufacturing sector has been discussed and validated with the support of a group of experts.