MEX Finland Spring meeting

On the afternoon of Monday the 12th of June 2023 MEX Finland held its spring meeting at Hotel Klaus K in Helsinki.

The meeting was opened by Juha Päivike, the freshly re-elected chair of MEX Finland, who welcomed members and guests to an afternoon full of talks and discussion on manufacturing. As guest speakers for the afternoon, we had the honor of learning from three leading company (Veturi) programs from Jani Savinainen of Sandvik, Juha Iivari of Konecranes, and Viktor Sundholm of Mirka. Our MEX members and partners, Christian Sundman of Wärtsilä, Risto Raunio of Roima Intelligence, and Johan Wallin of Synocus, as well as Kari Koskela and Kari Klossner of Business Finland, completed the list of contributors to the program.

Johan Wallin began the talks by giving an update on MEX Finland’s achievements during the last four years under the growth engine program of Business Finland. Wallin shared updates on new projects like Resilient Materials, wherein Sacometal was approved for funding of their Resilient Bronze Plan by Business Finland, Hybrid Flows, and WeldExcellence, the latter two of which are in preparation for Funding applications.

Jani Savinainen of Sandvik’s SHIFT 25 program presented how digitalization and electrification can impact the mining industry. Sandvik is building game-changing automated machinery for mining and improving safety and productivity as a part of the wider mining ecosystem

Juha Iivari of Konecranes presented their veturi program called Zero4 aiming to boost the industrial productivity and competitiveness of Finnish companies and decrease absolute greenhouse gas emissions and energy waste. Zero4 focuses on working towards the vision of a unified material flow platform that is developed together with ecosystem partners, universities, research institutes, and customers. Konecranes is building a co-innovation ecosystem of Finnish and international partners to fulfill the set mission and commercialize co-innovation solutions

Viktor Sundholm of Mirka presented the company and veturi program. Mirka is a world leader in surface finishing technology and offers a broad range of groundbreaking sanding solutions for the surface finishing and precision industry. Their veturi program SHAPE is driving the green transition of the manufacturing industry by enabling net carbon-negative surface finishing solutions. The SHAPE ecosystem aims to take a share of the remanufacturing business growth which is expected to reach €90 billion in the EU by 2030. Remanufacturing in the SHAPE ecosystem means designing products with circular capabilities, eliminating waste from the production processes, and linking the value chains to closed cycles.

Christian Sundman of Wärtsilä shared the latest news on the Open Smart Manufacturing Ecosystems live from Vaasa and reflected on building capabilities together. OSME has worked on several use case implementations during the last year and was able to share some of the results. Enhancing the visibility of work in progress digitally and sharing applications and data with the partners across a shared platform had many benefits from the reduction in lead time to an increase in capacity utilization.

Risto Raunio of Roima Intelligence, another OSME partner, shared further insights from the use case on integrated visibility and issue management collaboration between companies. The further development of the use case ultimately aims to provide cost-efficient solutions for SMEs that have yet to invest in next-generation digital tools.

The activities in OSME have led to the initiation of a new project called Deepening Integration in Manufacturing (DIM). It is still in the early planning phase of preparing a project plan for a possible Business Finland application.

Kari Koskela & Kari Klossner from Business Finland talked about Business Finland’s leading company (veturi) program which is progressing well. With the first initiatives graduating at the end of 2023, the first lessons are emerging on the implementation of ecosystem collaborations. Kari Klossner is head of the new Data Economy program and presented the opportunities for participation and funding within that new branch for the manufacturing industry.

As always at MEX Finland, the discussions throughout the event were lively and interesting leading to new connections and sparking new ideas. The meeting was followed by dinner and the conversations continued into the evening.