The ongoing digital transformation of the European industry will create enormous opportunities for business and society. Researchers and business leaders recognize the role of digital technology which is shifting from supporting processes towards becoming the enabler of fundamental business innovation and disruption. However, companies aiming to benefit from digitization will have to radically re-think not only how they can apply digital technology, but moreover on how they can increase their level of digital maturity to better integrate their processes - most notably development and production - within a future digital value chain. iDev40 introduces seamlessly integrated ECS development processes, safe and secure digital automation workflows, interoperable and inter-organizational network solutions as well as an enhanced transparency of data and intelligence that will lead to a reduction in the time to market (T2M) race for ECS solutions. This project will take the human factor seriously throughout all planned industrial use cases and will increase people excellence by identifying human-centric complexity drivers for integrated development and production, defining the right skill profiles of the employee in the factory of the future to cope with digitalization challenges and thereby scale digital technology adaption. Concerning the impact beyond the ECS industry itself, it is obvious that competitiveness of key European industrial domains heavily depends on the availability of leading edge ECS. 80% to 90% of the key differentiating competitive features of e.g. leading edge industrial and mobility suppliers are dependent on the built-in electronic components and software. Thus, the strategic goal of iDev40 is to enhance esential competencies for ECS "Made in Europe" to support in a sustainable manner European companies that have dominant global positions in key application areas such as efficient use of limited energy resources, smart mobility, as well as in equipment and materials for worldwide semiconductor manufacturing. Ultimately, iDev40 will foster European Leadership on Industry 4.0 as an important measure to safeguarding more than 15.000 jobs directly in the participating partner facilities, ~ 50.000 jobs of the people employed at all industry partner facilities worldwide as well as ~ 3 Million jobs in the whole European ECS value chain.