Production Across the Nordics

Report, 2022

In the uncertain and volatile market that companies are currently facing worldwide, researchers and engineers become a key link to strengthen the industry and universities in order to understand, communicate, and tackle current challenges. In the PhD course, International Production, the goal is to investigate what makes Sweden and Iceland booming industrial hubs driven by technology. Through the visits to different types of industries, such as fintech, medical, or automotive industry, we as researchers have gained a better understanding of the challenges they are currently facing. This report is a summary of our findings and observations.  

The participants have focused on the six challenge areas highlighted within the Produktion2030 graduate school and summarize their findings as:  

•Resource-efficient production: 
Data as a resource is becoming increasingly important for the majority of companies in the Nordics and the application of traditional resource management tools on data is a suggested area for future research.  

•Flexible production:
To strengthen organizations by enabling production systems to be flexible to address market variations is a key challenge to consider in the manufacturing industry

•Virtual production development:
Digitalization level is distinct in each Nodic country with the reason that each country has its own digitalization transformation policy and different measures on digitalization level. 

•Humans in the production system:
Humans are central in the production systems of the visited companies. Use of automation technology and AI to support humans in their work may become more common in the future.

•Circular production systems and maintenance:
Circular production systems require a complex approach through the whole value chain. Industry in the Nordics has started the adoption of a circularity approach. 

•Integrated product and production development: 
Integration of product and production development is a key business factor for the Nordic countries, and geographical proximity between the two departments can have a beneficial effect.  

We hope that this report provides more details regarding the success and current challenges of the Swedish and Icelandic enterprises.