Today we're organising an SFI Manufacturing Research Workshop in Trondheim. Around 25 researchers are joining the workshop, and the goal is to develop novel ideas for IPN-projects, based on the needs of the industry and in relation to the research areas of the centre.

The workshop started with an introduction on the different IPN-projects linked to the centre, followed by a presentation of each of the research areas: Multi-material products and processes, Robust and flexible automation, and Innovative and sustainable organisations.

SFI Manufacturing has 15 industry partners representing the Norwegian manufacturing industry, as well as NTNU and SINTEF as research partner. In the previous months, we have had the yearly one-to-one meetings with the industry partners, and the results of these meetings will be shared during todays workshop. Together with the researchers, we'll take a look at project proposal possibilities, and how we can meet the research needs of the industry in form of new IPN-projects. 

The SFI Manufacturing Annual Report 2018 is now available.

SFI Manufacturing has been in operation for 3,5 years now. During these years, the centre has addressed specific research topics within each of its three research areas: Multi-Material Products and Processes, Robust and Flexible Automation, and Innovative and Sustainable Organisations. In 2018 we have identified the specific results of this research so far and we have started a process of evaluation of their innovation potential. 

In the period of 2015 to 2017, a total of 28 scientific results with a potential for innovation has been identified. The work of SFI Manufacturing is focusing on the Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 1-3, but several of the identified results have been developed into, or contributed to, innovation projects on TRL 4-7. SFI Manufacturing has a joint ambition of developing a considerable volume of such innovation projects (budget goal over the centre period is 800 MNOK).

The status in 2018 is:

• 21 innovation projects have been granted and started in 2016-2018
• The total budget of these projects is 592 MNOK
• All partners of SFI Manufacturing are joining at least one of the projects
• 17 extra industrial partners outside the SFI consortium are participating in the projects

This clearly illustrates the importance of the innovation projects as a value chain for innovation based on knowledge developed in SFI Manufacturing, and their potential as an arena for dissemination. In the ongoing process of evaluating the innovation potential of SFI Manufacturing, we are now analysing the plan for value creation within each of these innovation projects. 

• Read the Annual Report 2018 here
• Download the report as PDF-file here​
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Vi er i gang med SFI Manufacturing workshop!

Det er den tiende gangen representanter fra Norges fremste forsknings- og bedriftsmiljøer innen vareproduksjon møtes til en to-dagers workshop, denne gangen i katapult-senteret MTNC på Raufoss.

I går ble over 60 stk med på kveldsworkshopen til Forskningsområde 3, Innovative og bærekraftige organisasjoner. Vi fikk diskutere to temaer, Fremtidens produksjonsorganisering og utvikling av bærekraftige forretningsmodeller, og avsluttet... kvelden med noe god tapas.

I dag har vi fokus på Forskningsområde 1, Multi-materielle produkter og produksjonsprosesser, med HyBond og MTNC som vertskap. HyBond vil fortelle om utviklingen av deres nye sammenføyningsteknologi, og vi vil få en oppdatering på status og aktiviteter i katapult-senteret.

– Det er en veldig spennende workshop så langt. Som deltaker får du være med å lære av bedrifter og prosjekter i teknologifronten, samtidig som du har en mulighet til å påvirke veien videre, sa en av de deltakerne under første kaffepausen i dag.

​Video fra workshopen finnes her

Nyhetsbrevet fra Forskningsområde 1 finnes her (på engelsk)

Torsdag i forrige uke ble det gjennomført et evalueringsmøte i forbindelse med midtvegsevaluering av SFI Manufacturing. Dette ble gjennomført av et internasjonalt panel oppnevnt av Norges Forskningsråd:

• Professor David Williams, Loughborough University, UK (generalist, panel leader)
• Dr. Mattias Lundberg, Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, Sweden (generalist)
• Professor Andreas Archenti, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden (scientific expert)
• Professor Dimitris Kiritsis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausann, Switzerland (scientific expert)

 
8 av våre PhDer og Postdoc var inne til et felles intervju med panelet, i tillegg til at senterledelsen og styret hadde 2 sesjoner med fokus på henholdsvis vitenskapelig innhold og senteraktiviteter.
 
Vi i senteret synes dette ble et godt og interessant møte, vi fikk flere gode innspill som vi kan ta med oss i den videre utviklingen av SFI Manufacturing. Nå skal panelet rapportere sin evaluering til Forskningsrådet som tar dette inn i den totale midtvegsevalueringen. Resultatet av midvegsevalueringen fra Forskningsrådet er forventet å være klar i høst.

​Senterleder Sverre Guldbrandsen-Dahl presenterer senterets PhDer og Postdoc under 
midtvegsevalueringen som fant sted på Raufoss. Foto: SFI Manufacturing

8 av senterets PhDer og Postdoc var inne til et felles intervju med panelet. Fra venstre: Muhammad Zeeshan Khalid, Linn Danielsen Evjemo, Siri Marthe Arbo, Eirik Hamre Korsen, Henrik Brynthe Lund, Mathias Hauan Arbo og Tina Bergh. Foto: SFI Manufacturing

​Flott artikkel i Gemini om hjemhenting av produksjon, med kommentar av Henrik Brynthe Lund, som er som stipendiat knyttet til SFI Manufacturing, og forsker på hva vareproduserende bedrifter i Norge gjør for å holde seg konkurransedyktige.

– Fortsatt er den globale trenden at vareproduksjon flyttes fra høykostland til lavkostland. Men vi har fått en del eksempler på hjemflytting, eller reshoring, som det kalles. Det begynner å bre seg en bevissthet blant norske bedriftsledere at det faktisk er mulig, sier Henrik.

I sin studie har Henrik tatt for seg ni bedrifter som har flyttet hjem produksjonen fra lavkostland i Øst-Europa og Østen. For flere av dem er automatisering og robotisering nøkkelen til hjemhenting. Da får man produsere med færre arbeidere, og spare inn på produksjonskostnadene. 

Les mer i artikkelen her
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​Two overall trends in society are digitalization and sustainability. Digitalization will influence the everyday life of employees and management in manufacturing companies: The interaction with technology, how and who are making decisions, the ability to simulate changes in production technology before physically implementing these changes, and a large amount of generated data will influence the development of new products and services. Similarly, business development in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will affect the entire organisation: Manufacturing processes, development of products and production technology, and co-creation with external bodies.

SFI Manufacturing's research area "Sustainable and Innovative Organisations" concerns the human and organisational aspects of advanced manufacturing companies. The overall objective is to develop knowledge and solutions for advanced work systems that can utilize new technology and flexible and automated processes to manufacture sustainable multi-material products.

The research area has defined two new work packages, "Future Manufacturing Organization models" and "Sustainable business model development". The research area is not only restructured, it also involves a few new people. Last Friday we invited all involved researchers and PhD students to a kick-off in Trondheim. The main topic of the workshop was to discuss the work plan for 2019: What are our objectives and milestones, how can we organize the work and activities, how can we strengthen the involvement of the industry partners, and how can we recruit master students to increase our resources base? The time was well spent, and people headed back home with new energy and enthusiasm!
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Kick-off new work packages. Foto: SFI Manufacturing

Linn Danielsen Evjemo is one of the PhD-candidates of SFI Manufacturing. In this blog, she takes us along on a journey about additive manufacturing using industrial robots.

My name is Linn Danielsen Evjemo, and I started my PhD work in December 2016. My project is focused on large-scale, robotized additive manufacturing (AM) using industrial robot arms, with a special focus on cold metal transfer welding (CMT). The aim is to combine the large workspace of an industrial robot arm with the flexibility and relative affordability of traditional AM methods.

Early in my PhD I did some preliminary experiments together with PostDoc Signe Moe (also part of SFI Manufacturing), building a simple cup-structure in a viscous glue using a UR-5 robot manipulator, as shown in figure 1A. The cup structure, shown in figure 1B, was built from the bottom-up in a continuous helix-path, which separates this from traditional AM methods that require the build to be done strictly layer-by-layer.

Figure 1A and 1B: Images from proof-of-concept experiment using robot manipulator and an air-pressure driven caulking gun. 

The focus has later been on building metal structures using arc-welding, mostly CMT. These experiments have been done in collaboration with technician Morten Høgseth Danielsen, and later also PhD fellow Geir Langelandsvik, at SINTEF Industry. In the first experiments, a simple box structure was built in a semi-layer-wise manner using aluminum, in order to map the basic challenges related to temperature and material behavior for a continuous build.

Figure 2A and 2B: 2A shows a simulation of the path used to build the aluminum box structure shown in 2B, which has dimensions 12 x 12 cm2. The layer height in the simulation in 2A is not representative of the actual welding process.

​We have later focused on challenges related to intersections within each layer, as well as keeping a build going (close to) continuously. This has been tested both with aluminum and with a nickel alloy (Inconel 625), the latter shown in figure 3B and 3C. As can be expected, it was easier to keep the shape of the structure under control when using a metal with a higher melting point, because this made the structure less likely to distort as the build went along and the temperature rose.

Figure 3A, 3B and 3C: Here we can see the path for the weld in order to avoid actual crossings within each layer, and the final metal structure before and after processing. The dimensions are approximately 16 x 16 cm2.
 
The next step will be to advance to more complex structures, and to try and exploit the freedom in orientation of the robot arm to build structures that could not be built using traditional AM methods.

Eirik Bådsvik Hamre Korsen is one of the PhD-candidates of SFI Manufacturing. In this blog, he introduces us to the world of performance management systems in manufacturing organizations.

I am Eirik, a PhD-student funded by SFI Manufacturing at NTNU, and working at NTNU at Gjøvik. I have been a management consultant within the field of performance management and system implementation before exploring academia. At SFI Manufacturing, I am a part of research area three, innovative and sustainable organizations. In my PhD, I study performance management systems in manufacturing organizations. 
 
Performance management tools
An interesting observation is how organizations are useing different performance management tools in parallel, which all have the same purpose: to implement the organizational strategy. Most organizations have a management reporting system based on a set of key performance indicators, often inspired by, or based on, balanced scorecards. In parallel, they have a quality management system, which is audited and qualified for certification. In additional, they are useing a number of operational or lean tools and techniques.
 
In my PhD, I explore how the organization uses these different tools and techniques, in the light of strategic alignment, the dilemma of difference perspectives between engineers versus business management educated managers, and how this is being influenced by digitalization and IT-systems.
 
I question to what extent these tools contribute to the strategic alignment of the organization. Are any of these tools in conflict with each other or counterproductive? At to what extent are they integrated into each other, or are they living parallel lives?
 
Digitalization
After Kaplan and Johnsen (1987) “Relevance lost”, there has been a debate on how management accounting can be relevant and reflect the organization's operations. One of their explanations is the different educational background of business management and finance versus engineers. To what extent does this dilemma still exists? 
 
The performance management tools are often tightly linked to the organization's IT-systems. A buzz word these days is digitalization, and many ask how this will impact their organizations. I ask how digitalization will influence the performance management systems, and how we manage our organization?

Processes, tools and techniques 
As manufacturing (or any organization) continually needs to improve to survive, I hope to contribute on how we can improve the performance management processes, tools and techniques used in organizations. I believe, by using the right tools to the right purpose in an efficient and effective manner, we can increase the basis for decision making, allocation or priority of resources, and motivation of employees and managers. 
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​Eirik's contact information 

Etter mange år med utflagging, er det de siste årene blitt flere bedrifter som har tatt produksjonen hjem til Norge igjen. Men hvordan skal man klare å produsere saker og ting i Norge og tjene penger på det, når lønningene fortsatt er en brøkdel i utlandet? Og hvor viktig er det at produksjonen ligger her?

I NRK P2s program Ekko i går var tema «Made in Norway: Hvorfor det?». PhD-stipendiat Henrik Brynthe Lund deltok i en debatt rundt tema «reshoring», med utgangspunkt i forskningen innenfor SFI Manufacturing. De andre deltakerne i debatten var Stein Lier Hansen fra Norsk Industri, og Trygve Hegnar fra Finansavisen.

Hør på det interessante programmet her
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​The 6th of July 2018, Kongsberg Gruppen ASA entered into agreement with Rolls-Royce plc to acquire Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine, a world leading technology business within maritime operations.

The transaction is structured as an acquisition by Kongsberg of the marine products, systems and aftermarket services businesses carried out by subsidiaries of Rolls-Royce plc. The transaction does not include Bergen Engines nor Rolls-Royce's Naval Business.

​– The maritime industry has over the last years experienced demanding market conditions and even though there is still uncertainty we expect the market to be facing growth with technology and innovation being key drivers. For more than 200 years Kongsberg has been a pioneer for high technology industrial development with a long term perspective. The acquisition of Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine is in line with our growth ambitions”, says Eivind Reiten, Chair of the Board of Kongsberg.

Both Kongsberg Maritime Subsea and Rolls-Royce are part of the SFI Manufacturing consortium. 
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Read more about the acquisition here (press release)

Geir Håøy, CEO of Kongsberg, and Tristan Halford-Maw, Deputy Director M&A Rolls-Royce. Foto: Kongsberg