## 3 Industry Specification Analysis  
The previous section showed that there remains much unused potential for industrial DR. In order to determine why this potential is currently not being exploited, the existing barriers are identified below. To achieve this, the method of structured interviews and workshops was applied. These were conducted with different companies and stakeholders, which were elicited in focus group interviews comprising representatives of manufacturing companies and the energy market. The information was collected in the context of \"SynErgie\" ([[https://www.kopernikus-projekte.de/synergie](https://www.kopernikus-projekte.de/synergie)]([https://www.kopernikus-projekte.de/synergie](https://www.kopernikus-projekte.de/synergie))), a large German research project, and beyond that discussed, filtered, and consolidated in internal workshops with numerous researchers from different disciplines. In doing so, the creation of an integrated approach for industrial DR, which includes all relevant providers, consumers, and other market participants is the central goal [74]. As more than 80 partners from industry, energy markets, research, and society were involved, a substantiated specification could be prepared that records the demands of all relevant stakeholders. The requirements identified by the method described above are summarized and outlined below:  
1. Functionality: The automated synchronization of industrial energy consumption and supply requires several different partners and functional levels from the energy market down to single machines to be involved. The increasing number of participating companies and the increasing challenges to balance the power grid make automated synchronization necessary. For this reason, an end-to-end approach is required, which defines the continuous information flow throughout all relevant stages and maps the following three central use cases: procurement of market information (e.g., price forecasts), evaluation of flexibility (e.g., ideal marketing time), and marketing of flexibility (on the appropriate target market). In addition, information on energy consumption needs to be equally considered within manufacturing. Thus, appropriate functionalities throughout all organizational levels of a company are required. 2. Interoperability: Currently, a variety of communication protocols, data models, and IT systems are used in manufacturing. On top of that, energy markets and grid providers apply several interfaces and data models. Consequently, interoperability is another important requirement to enable a high number of heterogeneous companies to take part in a flexible manner. The integration of  
Figure 1: Current landscape of IT platforms, services, aggregators, and energy markets. existing standards, shaping a transferable and robust architecture, as well as the harmonization of data models are crucial for the development of a new ecosystem in the context of energy flexibility. 3. Free competition: To achieve wide acceptability and to offer incentives for companies to participate in the energy markets, a solution needs to be offered that ensures free competition. Accordingly, obstacles for new market actors need to be minimized, and an open ecosystem must be offered that provides flexible access to the services of different providers. In addition, industrial companies and other participants should be able to extend independently the functionalities of and solutions to their and their customers individual needs. 4. Privacy and security: Privacy and security are key requirements for companies to participate. The detailed energy consumption contains crucial information about a manufacturing company, because for example, the given utilization or the used technology can be derived. Thus, no confidential information about energy consumption, etc., should be provided to external competitors. Besides privacy, security probably plays an even more important role.