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Sustainable Industry X
A cognitive manufacturing vision.

The European industrial strategy aims at green, circular, and digital transformations. To line with this, the Sustainable Industry X vision by VTT provides an invaluable overview of the future of the manufacturing industry. Jump in and join the intelligent sustainability revolution.

Look inside the next industrial revolution.

Sustainable Industry X provides an outlined vision of the next industrial revolution, taking into account Europe’s ambitions to reduce carbon emissions, with particular emphasis on creating a more circular economy. This includes the idea that a future manufacturing industry should apply recent and future advances in ICT and telecommunications, that is, a shift to cognitive manufacturing will take place.

In our vision, the forthcoming industrial transition includes, first, the renewal of production through collaborative robots, additive manufacturing, sensor systems, AI and other appropriate technological developments. In addition, new advances in telecommunications and ICT/CI will be used to create a common Internet-of-Things.

Open production networks and supply chains could be used to plan and optimise operations within a vast network of companies. Within these transitions, there are many opportunities for new service models, which also support the creation of a circular economy.

Aims

Fulfilling careers and excited workers

Fulfilling careers and excited workers

Sustainability and attachment to circular economy

Sustainability and attachment to circular economy

Competive advantage and resilience with digital technologies

Competive advantage and resilience with digital technologies

A sustainable world of new career paths.

A sustainable world of new career paths.

In addition to the sustainability objectives, these new technologies, if properly applied, will enable the creation of interesting careers within the manufacturing industry, which is necessary to attract talented people. All this represents a competitive advantage that will allow production to be significantly strengthened in Finland and the EU.

Our aim is that this vision of Sustainable Industry X, which was developed by researchers mainly on the basis of literature research, will be further discussed and reformulated with industrial partners – this will enable the real common path to the next industrial revolution.

Professions of the future

Cobot operator

Cobot operator

Leena is an independent collaborative robot (cobot) operator. She works from her own garage, but in tight collaboration with a network of other cobot operators and additive manufacturing companies. Leena is not a programming expert, nor does she have a technical education background. The cobot device is so well designed that it can be easily programmed or, rather, “taught” through hand gestures.

Leena’s clients enjoy the maintenance, repair and return policy that lasts throughout Leena’s own lifetime – if the products break, Leena will fix them. Leena applies recycled material in creating the new products.

Logistics and supply chain analyst

Logistics and supply chain analyst

Aino is a logistics and supply chain analyst who uses a variety of traditional methods and planning tools, such as enterprise resource planning software, mathematical methods for demand forecasting and inventory management and geographical information systems for effective spatial planning. Her aim is to ensure the continuity of material and information flows across the supply chain.

In today’s global economy, Aino faces many issues such as demand fluctuations, uncertainty of supply, operational inefficiencies and many other disturbances involving economic, geopolitical, technological and environmental risks. With better data and decision-support, these issues can be analysed and managed. How can Aino be helped here?

Cyber-physical remote maintenance team

Cyber-physical remote maintenance team

Matti is a service technician for a production line manufacturer. In his work he focuses on consultation and customer support, obtaining information about a given situation or machinery state, clarifying problems, finding and analysing faults, and maintenance and assembly of replacement parts.

Increasing market fluctuations, the need for agile responses and worldwide service offerings broaden the complexity of knowledge and activities required to deal with customer and maintenance demands. Ideally, Matti could do all this remotely. By relying on digital technology, Matti could concentrate on soft skills, showing understanding and acting in an advisory and empathetic manner. What technology solutions exist to make Matti’s work easier?

Enter the new era of the manufacturing industry

Ambitious carbon reductions, competitive advantage and attractive new jobs – how to achieve all this?

Drawing from the advances within ICT – 5G, IoT, digital twins, sensing technologies and big data analytics – factories of the future will work together for gaining competitive advantage and for significant sustainability gains.

Join the revolution of the manufacturing industry. Fill the form to download Sustainable Industry X now and expand your industrial vision for tomorrow.

Download Sustainable Industry X whitepaper