In the North, it’s all about digitalization and collaboration

With its new Compass 2025–2030, the Northern Productivity Alliance (NPAL), a community of factories and their partners in the northern Netherlands, has chosen a single central ambition: structural productivity growth as the key to both economic strength and sustainability. At a time of labor shortages, scarce resources, and geopolitical uncertainty, that productivity must primarily come from smarter collaboration, digitalization, and new ways of organizing.

According to the strategic document, which serves as a roadmap for the next five years, the urgency is high. “Productivity is essential in a competitive world and for economic progress and prosperity,” NPAL states.

Northern and Eastern Netherlands form the NPAL region.

From talking to doing

Where NPAL has mainly positioned itself in recent years as a platform for knowledge sharing, the focus is now clearly shifting toward implementation. Clusters, the thematic networks in which participants collaborate, must contribute more concretely to measurable improvements.

This shift is supported by a more “challenge-driven” approach. This means that all activities are linked to concrete industrial challenges, such as digitalization, energy use, or labor shortages.

NPAL also aims to work more across clusters. Many issues, such as grid congestion or cybersecurity, cannot be confined to a single discipline.

Four levers for productivity

The strategy revolves around four classic production factors: capital, labor, nature, and entrepreneurship. NPAL has defined new priorities for each of these domains.

1. Capital: digitalization and automation
   Factories must accelerate investments in digitalization, data, and robotics—not only to produce more efficiently, but also to become less dependent on scarce labor. Cybersecurity is explicitly included in this effort.
2. Labor: developing and retaining talent
   Labor shortages are structural. NPAL therefore focuses on upskilling and reskilling existing employees, as well as increasing inflow through collaboration with educational institutions. At the same time, industry must become more attractive as an employer.
3. Nature: from scarcity to circular thinking
   Scarcity of energy, water, and raw materials demands a different way of producing. In the coming years, the emphasis will be on greening business cases and accelerating circular models.
4. Entrepreneurship: agility and collaboration
   Strong leadership and collaboration are seen as key conditions. NPAL aims to help companies better deal with regulatory pressure, respond more quickly to geopolitical changes, and develop solutions together.

Community as the engine

According to the Compass, NPAL’s strength lies in its community, which now includes around 220 participants from various sectors. Through knowledge sharing, joint projects, and the principle of “looking into each other’s kitchens,” best practices should spread and be applied more quickly.

Notably, NPAL explicitly does not position itself as a lobbying organization. The focus is on what companies can influence themselves: processes, collaboration, and technology.

To increase impact, cluster managers will play a more important role. They are expected not only to organize meetings but also to actively drive collaboration and deliver concrete results.

NPAL also aims to place greater emphasis on monitoring and assessments: systematic performance measurements to make improvements visible and steer progress.

Productivity as the answer to structural pressure

Ultimately, NPAL’s strategic direction is a response to structural trends. The working population is shrinking, resources are becoming scarcer, and international tensions are making supply chains more vulnerable. Simply deploying more people is no longer a solution, producing smarter is.

The Compass makes clear that NPAL wants to accelerate this transition - not with abstract visions, but with concrete steps in factory operations. Or, as director Joost de Boer puts it: the Compass is “not a report to read, but an invitation to act together.”