World-leading production 2030
Production 2030 is a strategic innovation program with the employer organization Engineering Industries as the main organization. The program supports and coordinates academic and industrial research with the aim of Sweden being one of the world's leading sustainable production countries by 2030 - the first choice for the development and production of advanced goods and services.
As we previously rewritten has Petra Lundgren and Patrik Axelsson from Ekan Management participated in two of the program's expert groups. On November 5, the Results Day - the inspiration program of the innovation program and the arena were held. Many of the projects within the program were presented and the participants had to listen to speakers from politics, industry and academia.
Håkan Nytorp, Divisional Head of Process Automation at ABB, and Johan Stahre, professor of production system at Chalmers discussed, among other things automation and how an increase in automated tasks does not remove jobs, but that the activities performed by people change. This means that new requirements are set for skills and education. One of the purposes of automation is to let people do what humans can best and let robots do monotonous repetitive tasks that do not require creativity and problem solving. Another trend they discussed was the increased digitalisation and how it allows to move the information to where it is needed, from binders or any computer somewhere in the workshop to the mobiles and plates of the operators. This means new ways of working and for many it will be a major change. The operators and the higher managers are the ones who best handle the changeover, while the middle managers are the ones who have the most difficulty in doing so, because the transfer of the information has meant that the operators now know more than what their immediate managers do.
India's Swedish ambassador talked about the extensive initiatives that India has recently launched and about new ones cooperation between Sweden and India. These are examples of how a long history of high-tech development and production makes Sweden an attractive partner.
The results day was also hosted by Charlotte Brogren, DG VINNOVA, Stefan Bengtsson, Rector of Chalmers and four political youth associations. They highlighted the risk of NATO (no action, talk only) and how investments need to be made focused as it is impossible to expect results from broad investments. Finally, Olof Persson, a member of the government, told us Advisory Board, on the government's new industrialization strategy for sustainable growth, where the focus is on, among other things. Transportation systems, Diet and health, Sustainable energy, Automation and Smart living.
All in all, it was a very inspiring day with many interesting research teams who talked about their ongoing innovation project to increase Sweden's competitiveness in the global production arena.
Read more about the day here.