The VET4DATACOOPERATION project has published its Needs Analysis Report, a key milestone in the development of the project's training programme. Funded under the Erasmus+ Framework, the report is based on a structured survey conducted between 26 January and 15 March 2026, which gathered responses from 97 manufacturing, research, education and innovation stakeholders across Europe. Its findings will directly shape the five training modules currently under development.
The Needs Analysis was led by the Macedonian Enterprise Development Foundation (MEDF) with contributions from all consortium partners. The purpose is to validate the project's initial training concept, to diagnose the specific challenges organisations face around data sharing and to tailor the training curriculum to the real and current needs of manufacturers.
Why a Needs Analysis?
Europe's manufacturing sector is under increasing pressure to adopt secured cross-company data exchange, but the hesitation still remains. So what is actually preventing them from doing so? This was the central question of this report.
The findings confirm that the gap between ambition and implementation is wide. While 63.9% of respondents report that management sees data cooperation as a competitive advantage for the next three to five years, only 44.4% confirm that their organisation currently shares operational data with external partners. More than a fifth of respondents (22.7%) report sharing no data at all with external parties.
This is not primarily a technology problem. Among organisations expressing hesitation, the main leading barriers are:
- Fear of losing intellectual property or control over company data — cited by 55.8% of hesitant respondents
- Absence of a clear business case for data sharing — cited by 42.9%
- Uncertainty about the concrete benefits — cited by 40.3%
- Legal uncertainty and skills gaps also featured consistently across all four partner countries.
Who took part?
The survey reached 97 respondents primarily based in Germany (27.8%), Austria (19.6%), North Macedonia (17.5%) and Slovakia (16.5%), together representing 81.4% of the full sample. More than 250 potential respondents were directly contacted.
Critically, the survey captured decision-making perspectives: Senior Managers (26.8%), Executives and Directors (19.6%) and Researchers (18.6%) together account for nearly two-thirds of all respondents. SMEs make up 61.9% of the sample, showing that the report reflects the real needs of the organisations the training is meant for.
What the survey reveals about current practice
Among the 75 respondents who currently share data, the most common purposes are:
- Joint R&D and innovation - reported by 52%
- Improving product quality and reliability - reported by 40%
- Optimising supply chains and logistics - reported by 7%
- Developing new data-driven services and business models - reported by 36%
Predictive maintenance, often cited as a flagship industrial data-sharing use case, was the least commonly reported purpose at 16%. This suggests that practical adoption is still limited despite significant interest in the concept.
Knowledge levels reflect a similarly uneven picture. While 51.5% of respondents report at least functional knowledge of data-sharing frameworks and Gaia-X, 48.5% remain at the level of basic awareness or no knowledge at all. The gap is particularly pronounced in North Macedonia, where only 11.8% of respondents report functional or higher knowledge, compared with 66.7% in Germany.
How this shapes the training programme
The survey also asked respondents to rate the importance of training topics across five thematic areas. The results show a clear learning priority structure. Data sovereignty - understanding how to maintain legal and technical control over data while sharing it - was rated high and critically important by 82.5% of respondents, the strongest result in the entire survey.
Foundational use cases, strategic necessity, Data Usage Agreements, value calculation and ROI - all received similarly strong ratings, confirming that organisations want training that is practical, governance-oriented and directly connected to business outcomes.
In response, the VET4DATACOOPERATION training programme will be structured around five interconnected modules:
- Module 1 - Foundations of Data Sharing in Manufacturing and Gaia-X
- Module 2 - Data Governance, Legal Frameworks and Data Usage Agreements
- Module 3 - Technical Architecture, Secure Data Exchange and Operational Readiness
- Module 4 - Business Models, ROI and Value Creation
- Module 5 - Organizational Readiness, Scaling and Future Growth
This structure ensures the training responds not only to technical questions but to the governance, legal and business concerns that the survey identified as the real barriers to participation.
As the project moves into module development, the findings from this report will serve as the baseline against which training content, examples and exercises are continuously aligned.
