Opportunities for smart factories: According to the Freudenberg study, medium-sized manufacturing companies have very different assessments of the relevance of self-controlled, decentrally networked production processes for their competitiveness: 61% of mechanical and plant engineering companies consider this point to be "not interesting". In contrast, only 33% of automotive companies do. While 9% of mechanical and plant engineering companies currently use self-control and networking in their production, the figure is already twice as high in the automotive sector. Automotive companies are also ahead in the use of intelligent production systems with 80%.