Interface: So every year you travel around the world to visit these factories?

0010-32695 Federico Torti: Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years traveling the world, and now we have a bigger team. Two people lead the work from the WEF’s perspective, and an eight-person research team of experts from various industries facilitate the selection process through field visits.

The eight industry partners are McKinsey, Johnson & Johnson, Schneider, Siemens, Koc Holdings (Turkey’s largest industrial group), Foxconn, Henkel and Catl.

Interface Think Tank: What is the geographical distribution of “lighthouse factories” around the world?

0010-32695 Federico Torti: We have now rated 153 lighthouses in four and a half years of work. Considering that there are about 10 million factories around the world, “lighthouse factories” represent a fairly small percentage. But overall, manufacturing contributes about $14 trillion to GDP, and if you look at the global distribution of that contribution, about a third comes from China. We can roughly say that the geographic distribution of lighthouse projects around the world is roughly in line with the distribution of GDP directly generated by manufacturing. Chinese “lighthouse factories” account for about 40% of our latest network.

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In the global manufacturing sector, China is undoubtedly one of the biggest powers, particularly in advanced technology and innovation.

Then we see about 25% of GDP growth coming from Europe, another important manufacturing cluster that, while perhaps relatively old in terms of manufacturing and facilities, is still innovative in some areas.

0010-32695 The rest of Asia contributed about 20 percent to growth, including India and Southeast Asia. These regions are among the fastest growing in the world in terms of the latest network of “lighthouse factories”, which may indicate that companies are now also looking for different production locations, production facilities in Asia.

One trend is that the number of “lighthouse factories” in India seems to be increasing. What are your observations on this?

Federico Torti: Yes, especially India and some countries in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Compared to the past few years, these countries are growing faster and they could be among the fastest growing emerging markets.