WAYS OF ENSURING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED MACHINE-BUILDING ENTERPRISES OF UKRAINE IN THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION CONTEXT

Abstract

The issues of the modern direction of sustainable development of the competitive machine-building industry in Europe and the possibility of transforming the experience of developed European countries into a strategy for the development of small and medium-sized machine-building enterprises in Ukraine are considered. It was noted that it is SMEs that are the basis for the development of the EU economy, and the rationale for this fact was given. It was emphasized that the engineering industry is the largest sector of the EU economy in terms of the number of enterprises, employment of workers, production and value added. It is assumed that it is the development of SMEs in the machine-building industry of Ukraine that will become a significant contribution to the accelerated restoration of the social and economic well-being of Ukrainian society during the period of the country's recovery. A comparative analysis of the numerical number of machine-building enterprises of various sizes is given both in the developed countries of Europe and in Ukraine. The need for the development and implementation of digital services in the machine-building industry of Ukraine, in accordance with the concept of Industry 4.0, was emphasized at all stages of the product life cycle to ensure the flexibility and competitiveness of SMEs. The barriers to the implementation of the 4.0 concept for the sustainable development of small and medium-sized businesses in the world are analyzed, and individual barriers are identified that today pose a threat to the development of the Ministry of Railways of Ukraine as a whole. It is noted that one of the biggest problems in the world development of the Ministry of Railways as a whole is the problem of training (retraining) a new generation of qualified personnel. It is concluded that in order to develop competitive SMEs in Ukraine in the context of its integration into the EU, it is necessary to pay attention to the training of highly qualified technical personnel who, on the one hand, can play the role of system integrators and implementers of Industry 4.0 tasks, and, on the other hand, be able to solve the associated problems of mechanical engineering technology from idea to product manufacturing using digital services based on a single digital core. The scientific value of the work lies in the substantiation of ways to ensure the competitiveness of SMEs based on the foundations of the symbiosis of education, science and manufacture on the basis of a single digital core.