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On the other side of the Atlantic, Canada is a pioneering country in terms of research, development and investment in AI. The Canadian government has high goals to strengthen the country's welfare and competitiveness with the help of AI. And here is a great opportunity for Automation Region's members to contribute.

For a period of one month, a group of students from Mälardalen University have been working on the Digital sömmerska (Digital tailor) project at the University of Borås. They have been tasked with robotising the human process of handling a fabric and sewing a simple garment.

“When it comes to costs and business benefits, it is important to implement automation if Sweden is to have a future in textile production,” says Yuliya Urban, who project manages the students’ tasks.

At Automation Region's Annual Meeting on 24 March, a progressive operational plan was established that will provide the direction of work efforts during the coming year. The starting point is a clear national commitment and focus on four prioritised areas for developing Swedish industry. New members were also elected to the Board and the meeting ended with mingling and socialising.

The Mikrofabriker project (Micro-factory) is looking for companies and people who want to be involved in developing a remake machine for clothes. A machine that can identify defects on garments by itself and automatically repair them so that the garment is given new life. A prototype is currently being developed will be used and displayed in Do Tank Center at Science Park in Borås.

The winners of the 2021 Automation Student competition, Moutoz Abdalrahman and Alistair Brice from Lund University, have investigated how a manual assembly process can be automated. The knowledge gained from their degree project can now be used to increase the degree of automation in industry.

Together with Science Park Borås, Automation Region runs the project Mikrofabriker, which investigates how textile and clothing production can be brought home to Sweden. The goal is to develop technology and manufacturing processes for circular and sustainable flows and production concepts.

On December 7, the project group visited ABB Robotics in Västerås to gather inspiration and discuss automation solutions. The study visit was followed by a discussion that was recorded in a studio and is now available to those who want to know more about the potential of automation in the textile industry.

Automation Region works to strengthen the Swedish industry's competitiveness with the help of research and innovation. We are now strengthening our national focus and offering by establishing a regional node for Västerbotten and Norrbotten based in Skellefteå.

– By connecting Sweden's strong industrial environments, we can create better opportunities to utilize our cutting-edge skills and drive the development of the industry of the future, says Catarina Berglund, process manager at Automation Region.

– Industrimötet Sverige offers a method for raising issues and challenges to a common agenda, says Ola Norén, Chairman of the Board of Automation Region. If we start now, and do it together, Sweden will be able to remain competitive in a global market.

During the autumn, Automation Region visits a number of Swedish industrial regions and gathers local companies, organizations and investors in workshops and talks on development and growth factors in industrial technology. Large parts of these meetings are filmed and the material can be read afterwards.

Read more about Industrimötet Sverige and watch the films →

Around the world, the industry is undergoing a technology-driven structural transformation where existing automation and IT systems are strengthened with new digital solutions. Developments within IndTech are rapid and have great significance for companies' competitiveness. In the new report Automation is now, Automation Region points out five areas that are of particular importance to Swedish industry.

Darja Isaksson is Director General of Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, and since 2019 has been a member of the Swedish National Digitalisation Council, set up by the Swedish Government. Vinnova is involved in the Industry Day on 7 September and we have spoken with Darja Isaksson about the role of the government in the continued development of the industry in Sweden.

With support from, among others, Automation Region, the graduate school IndTech Industrial Technology Graduate School has been established at Mälardalen University (MDH). The graduate school, which offers advanced education in industrial digitization, will train future research leaders to strengthen Sweden's industrial competitiveness.

Recently, the seminar series on the future forms of collaboration finished, where representatives from around 40 companies gathered to discuss working methods and organizational structures. Martin Marklund from Automation Region's member company Sigholm led the seminar series.

– In collaborations within the organization, we gain a lot from whether everyone can be a leader but is also open to being led. You are a leader in the specific situation where you are most knowledgeable, regardless of whether you are a senior or junior.

Automation Region's service business network brings together product-focused companies that want to develop their service operations. Two of the network's participants are Fredrik Gustafsson, Väderstad, and Fredrik Oskarsson at Westermo. They act in different lines of business but in the network, they work towards a common goal – to make everyday life easier for their customers by developing their service portfolio.

As the industry is digitized, the pressure for coordination and cooperation on standards and interoperability between different systems increases. In a joint initiative, RISE, the Royal Institute of Technology, Lund University, the Swedish Institute for Standards and Automation Region are therefore establishing a new knowledge platform for standardization in the digitalized industry.

In collaboration with Science Park Borås, Automation Region is investigating new ways to automate small-scale textile production. The collaboration creates opportunities for automation companies to find new business opportunities within the textile industry, where there is great development potential for automated manufacturing processes.

On December 8^th, Automation Region arranged a digital workshop on automated product configuration - the process of customizing a product. Representatives from about 20 companies and organizations worked on a fictitious case based on a manufacturing company that wants to modernize its product configuration environment.

A large part of Automation Region's activities, projects and initiatives are based on the newly established concept of IndTech. The term describes the development that is taking place in the industry right now, where existing automation and IT systems are being strengthened with new digital solutions. Swedish companies are judged to have a good starting point in this rapid structural transformation, but there are also challenges.

At the beginning of October, the pilot round of Automation Region's training Service Business was completed. The training is aimed at product companies that want to develop their service operations and increase the degree of digitization. We have talked to participants from Xylem and Kanthal - two companies that invest heavily in the development of new services.

How can AI be useful in production and manufacturing? What is important to think about and how do you get started? On September 22, Automation Region conducted a webinar focusing on industrial AI applications.

- More and more organizations are investing in AI, but in the traditional manufacturing industry development is not so fast, says Peiman Momeni, business developer at Peltarion. Many who we come in contact with state that they would like to wait for the technology to mature and for the tools to be better suited for their specific business.

In the textile and fashion industry, a large amount of products are overproduced, which leads to unnecessary emissions of chemicals and resource consumption in terms of, for example, water and electricity. The newly started project Mikrofabriker will make visible and remove waste in the value chain.

- It would be fantastic if we could achieve a profitable Swedish textile production with the help of new technical solutions, says Erik Valvring, project manager at Science Park Borås.

At Automation Region's webinar on June 23th, we met the member company PrimeKey, which showed how IT systems can be connected to the operational production environment. Proven technology in digital security is the basis for new applications, where it is possible, for example, to assign digital identities to products already in the manufacturing process.

The real benefit behind concepts such as AI and IoT is realized by transforming data into insight. Successful data analysis is based on structured collection, storage and use of information to generate business benefits, innovative power and business development.

Automation Region has spoken to three experts - how do they view developments in the field and what advice do they want to give organizations that want to get started creating value with the help of data analysis?

The spring of 2020 did not turn out as we expected. At the same time as authorities and politicians are working to reduce the spread of infection and dampen the effects of the stagnant economy, intensive crisis management and transition in industry is ongoing. How do companies think about the crisis and the future?

Automation Region's Business Development Group plans and conducts activities aimed at increased business and networking. The group's most recent meeting was conducted remotely, focusing on the effects of the corona pandemic and what the companies in the network can do to support each other. We have talked to three of the group's members - representatives from Karlskoga Automation, Atea and CGI.

There are several different measurement tools that companies and organizations can use to assess their own prerequisites for innovation. Helena Blackbright, researcher at Mälardalen University and project manager at Automation Region, has studied what determines the effect and benefit of these self-assessments.

At the beginning of April, Automation Region took part for the first time in the Hanover Exhibition where, together with the Swedish Exhibition & Congress Centre and 10 exhibiting companies, we hosted the Swedish automation pavilion. Sweden is recognized internationally as an industrial and innovation nation, and the automation pavilion constituted a rendezvous point for Swedish companies, organisations and authorities.

As a participating party in an EU-funded project, Automation Region contributes to innovation and automation in the agricultural sector. What began as a concrete technical challenge – the problem with soil compaction in agriculture – has been expanded and now also covers development of a general innovation model for green industries.

For the first time, Automation Region is participating in Hannover Messe, the world’s largest industrial fair. Together with the Swedish Congress and Exhibition Centre and ten exhibiting companies, we are building an automation pavilion – a shop-front for our Swedish expertise and tradition of collaboration and innovation.

Automation Region is participating in a number of different projects which aim to stimulate innovation and growth. This spring we are looking at some of these projects in more detail, and the first up is Swesa – an investment which includes a digital incubator for growth companies in the energy sector.

DigiCORE is a long-awaited lab environment in which companies, public-sector organisations and academia can collaborate and test ideas in order to bolster the digital transformation together. On 6 December, the lab was inaugurated at RISE SICS in Västerås with over 100 curious onlookers.

Many industrial companies are grappling with the same issues: How can we utilise collected data in order to streamline our production? How do we maintain the machines in the best possible way? Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to work proactively, is a step in the right direction.

Robot Process Automation (RPA) involves automating and streamlining repetitive and administrative tasks. Monotonous tasks bore the staff, they take time to perform and human error can sneak in. Automation Region’s September breakfast meetings went under the slogan: Employ a robot and free up time for value-creating tasks!

How do digitization and modern automation affect the development of the industry and society of tomorrow? The Automation Summit conference will bring together decision-makers to discuss how we can best invest in Sweden's future. October 9th is the big day.