Collaboration - the key to smart industry

Today, the manufacturing industry faces a number of major challenges. In the short term, it is about high energy prices, and in the longer term about meeting sustainability targets. To meet these challenges, industry needs to work smarter, not least through the use of new technologies. And new technologies are created through collaboration.

For many in industry, digitisation is a vague concept, and people do not know where to turn to acquire anything other than ordinary computers. But technology affects most areas of a business today and there are more digital solutions available than ever.

So, within industry, there are many technology companies with unique innovations to turn to today, but they don't create their solutions in a vacuum. It is by engaging with industry's challenges that new innovations see the light of day. Collaborative projects and forums are essential to drive progress.

By keeping up with technological developments, manufacturers can lower their energy costs, increase their competitiveness by offering smarter products and help create a more sustainable future.

Help save energy consumption

The technology company DAZOQ helps manufacturing and process industries to make their energy use more efficient. Using wireless sensors, they measure their customers' energy consumption. The data is collected, trends are analysed and DAZOQ then comes up with savings suggestions.

Their solution has made energy use more efficient for BTT Plåt in Kisa, for example, which has been able to adapt both its working methods and the way it staffs its operations to avoid energy waste and pay less for the electricity it uses.

- Our solution provides quick and easy savings in the short term, without large investments, says Victor Borén, Business Developer at DAZOQ.

It starts with energy consumption, but DAZOQ can help with additional parameters the more data is collected. Together with the customer, they design work routines and review external agreements. And cooperation is growing, even indirectly between different companies.

- We benefit from our experience with other customers in similar situations. Over time, through our collaboration with different companies, we have gathered a whole toolbox of effective solutions," says Victor Borén.

Creating sustainability through shared data

Hand in hand with the energy issue goes the sustainability issue - by far the most important challenge we face today.

Something that is increasingly in demand when it comes to sustainability is information about the carbon footprint of products throughout the value chain. Many companies only know their own figures, and they are usually only a fraction of the total emissions.

ChainTraced helps companies to communicate product information throughout the value chain.

One company that has taken up the challenge of product carbon footprints is ChainTraced. They form part of a project together with steel manufacturer SSAB and their customer Nitator, which aims to facilitate the flow of information between stakeholders.

Through a technical platform provided by ChainTraced, SSAB can easily communicate important information about the products they supply to Nitator. The material comes with a product passport that includes CO2 footprint information.

Nitator can, in turn, update the product passport with information based on their own processes, and pass on the aggregated information to their customers. In this way, complete CO2 footprint data can accompany the products throughout the value chain.

- In the past, companies have only optimised their own internal process, and have not thought much about the bigger picture. This leads to sub-optimisation, and the cost is just shifted around the value chain. With complete and shared data, we can draw the right conclusions and make the right sustainability changes together," says Victor Andersson, CEO of Chaintraced.

Get to the heart of industry knowledge sharing

Someone who has a passion for collaboration around new technologies is Magnus Mörstam, coordinatorof Elmia Subcontractor Tech Arena, which, this autumn, forms part of Elmia Subcontractor 2022, the leading arena for knowledge, innovation and the manufacturing industry of the future.

-We want to create meetings and invite conversations between those who develop new digital technologies and industry, because it is when knowledge meets and skills are combined that new innovations emerge, says Magnus Mörstam.

At Tech Arena, visitors will be able to see real cases from different technology companies. DAZOQ and ChainTraced, among many others, will present their respective collaborations to the fair's visitors.

The Arena will be an opportunity for visitors to see how new innovations are applied in practice, to physically touch the products in an interactive environment, to listen to experts and to make new connections with the top players in new technologies.

Meet experts and build relationships - Read more about the Tech Arena here.