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The organization (called the Ipar 4.0 Nemzeti Technológiai Platform Szövetség, or NTPSZ, in Hungarian) elected industrial digitalization expert István Ács president at its recent annual meeting. It says Hungary faces exceptional pressure from the international competitive environment, but also a historic opportunity.
According to Central Statistical Office data cited by the NTPSZ, industrial production accounted for 22% of Hungary’s GDP in 2023, an above-average share by European Union standards.
That makes industrial competitiveness a central issue for the country’s economic future. Yet Hungary remains below the V4 average in productivity, and the platform argues that improving efficiency is no longer possible without digitalizing companies and industrial processes.
The warning comes as automation, robotics, artificial intelligence and data-driven manufacturing are spreading rapidly across industry globally. According to the NTPSZ, Hungarian companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, remain significantly behind in this transition, even though SMEs are crucial for strengthening national competitiveness.
The NTPSZ frames the next few years as a choice. Hungary can accelerate industrial digitalization and strengthen its position in high-value technology chains, or it can gradually fall behind countries that already treat digitalization, AI and data-driven operations as foundations of economic competitiveness.
With coordinated action across the Hungarian innovation ecosystem, however, the country could achieve a major leap in technology and productivity and become not merely a follower but a shaper of European industrial innovation.
“Hungary has the engineering knowledge, industrial experience and innovation capability to become one of the region’s defining industrial technology centers. To achieve this, however, we need more cooperation, faster knowledge transfer and solutions that can also be used in corporate practice,” Ács says.
“The Industry 4.0 Technology Platform wants to be an active and constructive professional partner to all industry actors in this,” Ács adds.
He succeeded László Monostori as the NTPSZ president. Speaking at the May 28 general assembly where he was elected, Ács thanked his predecessor for his work over the past decade and said it was important that Monostori would continue to support the professional community as its honorary president.
“Without a digital regime change, Hungarian industry will fall behind for good; Hungary has no time to waste,” Ács warns. “We want to help ensure that digitalization is not merely a theoretical possibility for Hungarian industry, but is quickly and comprehensively built into the everyday operations of companies and manufacturing businesses,” he says.
NTPSZ says it will support companies and government industrial policy through broad professional cooperation in the coming years, while also strengthening professional dialogue and knowledge sharing around digitalization. It wants to act as a partner in addressing inherited challenges facing the Hungarian economy and in realizing new opportunities.
The organization considers the preparation of an industrial digitalization strategy for government decision-makers an urgent task. The document will assess the current state of Industry 4.0 in Hungary and offer professional guidance on the most pressing steps needed for industrial digitalization. The NTPSZ says its proposals will be based on expert and industry experience, extensive market feedback and the involvement of actors across the domestic industrial ecosystem.
The core issue, according to the organization, is that digitalization must not become the internal matter of a few large companies. Without technological catch-up among SMEs, Hungary cannot move onto a durable, higher value-added industrial growth path.
The platform argues that efficiency improvement and industrial digitalization are partly investments in the future, but, to an even greater extent, questions of mindset. It says several studies have shown that investment in digitalization can give companies an ROI in as little as 6-18 months.
“The goal is for Hungarian companies not to be the sufferers, but the winners of digital transformation. Industry 4.0 is not about jobs disappearing, but about jobs changing, and about how efficiency can become a competitive advantage and a shared social force,” Ács says.
For manufacturers, suppliers and SMEs, digitalization is now directly tied to productivity, cost control, labor transformation and access to higher value-added production chains. For a manufacturing economy that still relies heavily on industrial output, the strategic risk is therefore not only technological delay. It is the possibility that productivity, supplier integration and investment attractiveness all weaken together if digital tools remain concentrated among larger corporations over the next cycle.
New NTPSZ president István Ács has spent 35 years in innovation and industrial automation. He built much of his career at Bosch Rexroth, starting in 1990 as a design engineer and later working as an engineer-salesman and division leader. From 1999, he served as managing director of Bosch Rexroth’s Hungarian operation, and from 2015 also oversaw the group’s activities in the wider Adriatic region.
He later worked as the senior executive responsible for Industry 4.0 at the Bosch Group in Hungary. His professional achievements include the creation of CU.BE Budapest, Bosch Rexroth’s innovation, education and experience center, which attracts thousands of professional visitors and students annually and has become one of Hungary’s most important digital education centers.
The Industry 4.0 Technology Platform Association (NTPSZ) brings together key actors in Hungary’s industrial digitalization ecosystem, including leading international corporations, Hungarian SMEs, academic institutions, research institutes, vocational and higher education organizations, and R&D and training centers.
Within NTPSZ, Ács initiated the annual Smart Manufacturing (SmartMan) Conference and Festival. Its purpose is to turn industrial digitalization from an abstract technological promise into a practical reality for Hungarian economic actors.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of June 19, 2026.
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