Which Types of Manufacturing Business? A Preliminary Approach Based on Metadata to Overcome Standard Industrial Analysis

The so-called “Industry 4.0” is giving birth to a new concept of factory, thus today more than ever governments needs a strong industrial policy ensuring competitiveness of their enterprises. The call of manufacturing industry for more clear and robust industrial policies and commitments suggests that policymakers should base their decisions in a more targeted way to ensure and spur productivity and competitiveness. The present paper provides a bottom-up approach to extract information on specializations (activity), competences and skills of companies, starting from their websites. The proposed approach enhances information available from official sources in order to appreciate the difference between business operative in the same industry, beyond aggregation by digit that can be adopted by using standard classification of economic activities. The results of the analysis on the manufacturing industry allow us to represent in a more detailed and updated way the activities actually carried out by the companies, also grouping/separating them in a more meaningful way than using ATECO codes