Manufacturing as a Service and Twin Transition: discover the MASTT2040 casebook

How Manufacturing as a Service can support the EU's digital and green transition by 2040

How can you produce more efficiently, using fewer resources, while strengthening your industrial resilience? From on-demand manufacturing platforms to digital product passports, Manufacturing as a Service is transforming the way production is organised. The MASTT2040 casebook analyses 15 European industrial cases and 41 interviews and puts their contribution to the Twin Transition up to 2040 into perspective.

Your production lines under pressure

Increased customisation, reorganisation of supply chains, growing environmental constraints: European industry needs to be reinvented.

Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) offers a practical response to this challenge. Rather than centralising all your equipment and infrastructure, MaaS gives you access to production capacity via digital platforms. Machines, software, data, expertise: everything becomes available on demand, without tying up capital.

But MaaS goes further than traditional outsourcing. Thanks to automation, instant quotes and automatic feasibility analysis, it gives you unprecedented agility while reducing stocks and lead times.

MASTT2040 identifies four areas of Manufacturing as a Service

The casebook Current state of MaaS approaches and best practices to advance the CE, produced as part of the European MASTT2040 project, highlights four key dimensions of MaaS.

1. Distributed manufacturing and production on demand
   Digital platforms connect principals and manufacturers. You can order customised parts via a fully digitalised process. Results: less stock, better use of resources and shorter lead times.
2. Design automation and digital twins
   Digital twins and other digital tools reduce errors, material waste and development times. Design becomes a direct lever for industrial performance and energy efficiency.
3. Equipment as a Service
   Equipment is made accessible via a subscription model, shifting investment from capital expenditure to operating expense. Predictive maintenance and remote optimisation improve machine availability and enhance industrial flexibility.
4. Integrating the circular economy
   Digital product passports enhance the traceability of materials and facilitate repair, remanufacturing and spare parts management. In this way, MaaS supports the short cycles of the circular economy and helps to reduce emissions.

An evolving model in the face of environmental challenges

Today, many MaaS platforms focus on growing. Sustainability is gaining importance, but it is not yet the central driver of the model. The analysis highlights a potential that is still only partially exploited.

MaaS can contribute to:

• Reducing energy consumption
• Limiting waste
• Extending product life cycles
• Strengthening the resilience and regional management of supply chains.

Integrating environmental objectives into platforms more systematically from the design stage would facilitate the green transition.

Looking ahead to 2040: the MASTT2040 roadmap

As well as taking stock of the current situation, the MASTT2040 project puts forward a strategic roadmap up to 2040: 15 detailed European industrial cases, full SWOT analysis, key success factors and levers for integrating sustainability.

Funded by the European Union as part of the HORIZON-CL4-2023-TWIN-TRANSITION-01 programme (project number 101138342).