KesTech’s foresight- and roundtable-work to kick off in autumn 2024
The first process to start is foresight work. Like in the previous KesTech’s operating season, this involves examining selected themes to identify the phenomena they encompass. The goal of foresight activities s to look into the near future and, with this vision, understand what actions we should take now.
The second process called roundtable discussions involves turning the insights and results from foresight work and other information gathering into concrete actions. The aim is to form working groups, consisting of companies and KesTech participants, around the chosen themes. By working together, we aim to create a target vision and then take actions to achieve it. This could mean starting new R&D projects, smaller initiatives, or developing new methods to make better use of existing resources.
Upper Savo region is not isolated from the rest of the world. Industry evolves and faces challenges here just as it does elsewhere. Therefore, we don’t need to, nor should we, start addressing the situation and challenges from scratch. In KesTech’s new operating season, our goal is to leverage the work done by Sustainable Industry X (SIX), an industry-led national consortium.
In the Smart Manufacturing cluster, a national roadmap has been developed outlining what future products will look like and what requirements they will place on the future manufacturing supply chain. These development areas are divided into six themes:
1. Manufacturing smartness, which includes collecting and using data and product-related information to develop design and manufacturing processes.
2. Green Manufacturing, which involves measuring, calculating, and reporting emissions data, as well as implementing circular economy solutions and improving energy efficiency.
3. Leveraging supply network, which includes developing platforms and principles for data sharing within networks, optimizing network logistics, and improving situational awareness.
4. New work, which includes creating socially sustainable and attractive technology sector jobs, managing a global workforce, enhancing human capabilities, and utilizing assisted systems (XR).
5. Novel manufacturing technologies and paradigms, which includes developing and utilizing simulation models from the design process onwards, integrating additive and subtractive manufacturing, and finding efficient ways to organize production.
6. Autonomous Operations and Automation, which includes production agility, collaborative robotics, and predictive maintenance.
While these themes are designed from the perspective of future products and the manufacturing industry’s supply chain, they also address broader industrial topics. Our goal at KesTech is to use this established framework but adapt and apply it to the industry in the Upper Savo region. However, we cannot address all themes at once, so we need to prioritize and identify the most critical and challenging ones to address right now. For this, we need and value the insights of the local industry.