May 30, 2017
The high-level industry figures of Finland and Europe gathered to the Manufacturing Performance Days 2017 (MPD) event at Tampere Hall on Tuesday. Both Minister of Labor Jari Lindström and Vice-President of the EU Commission Jyrki Katainen praised DIMECC Ltd, the organizer of MPD, as the role model of European innovation ecosystem.
The Finnish innovation discussion received strong statements to support the innovation model based on wide cooperation between the public and private sector. DIMECC Ltd, the key Finnish expert of industrial innovation cooperation, was praised by the highest possible actors for its success to generate competitiveness for the most important industrial companies in Finland. DIMECC is jointly owned by the leading Finnish industrial companies and research institutes.
“DIMECC has produced clearly better results than what would have been possible based solely on companies’ own resources”, stated Minister of Labor Jari Lindström when delivering the greetings of the Finnish state for 800 leading industrial influencers. He pointed out the importance of public innovation funding as a key to companies’ success. DIMECC’s work is based on a model, where public funding covers less than half of the costs related to wide innovation cooperation and the companies invest the rest.
”DIMECC as a leading European research and development platform is a role model”, acknowledged Minister Lindström in his speech.
“Innovation ecosystems like DIMECC can certainly play a crucial role, and enable a very favorable return on investment. We need more positive examples like this”, underlined also Jyrki Katainen, Vice-President of the EU Commission, in his video greetings to MPD influencers. According to Katainen, the industry must flourish in Europe, since it provides 50 million Europeans with jobs.
Client is in the core of industrial digitalization
Minister Lindström emphasized in his speech also the importance of the client. This was in the centre of the address by CEO Henrik Ehrnrooth of KONE Corporation.
“We live the time of the customer. Clients demand constant and immediate service. The customers want outcomes, not new technical features”, stressed Ehrnrooth. Tomas Hedenborg, the Chair of the MPD organizing committee and the President of Orgalime, the European engineering industries association, amused the influencers with a customer perspective.
“Could we think that an electric toothbrush would send information to a Kone elevator and that the same information would also be transferred to a car manufactured in Uusikaupunki by Valmet Automotive?” According to Hedenborg, an intelligence toothbrush possibly suitable for this is already in use.
Pasi Rannus, Senior Vice President of the Manufacturing business line at Valmet Automotive, unwrapped to the influencers the success story of the car factory in Uusikaupunki, which Tomas Hedenborg described as the best example of automation’s positive effects on employment.
“It is feared that robotization will delete jobs. The factory in Uusikaupunki is the most robotized factory in Finland, and they have been constantly hiring thousands of new employers. The change is true, but positive”, explains Hedenborg the relation between automation and jobs.
Further information:
Tomas Hedenborg, Chair, MPD Organisation Committee, +358 50 310 1999, tomas.hedenborg(at)fastems.com
Harri Kulmala, CEO, DIMECC Ltd, +358 40 840 6380, harri.kulmala(at)dimecc.com
