VTT can aid companies in the transformation to agile manufacturing and improve the competitiveness through feasibility studies of new technologies and implementation planning.
Key facts: agile, flexible manufacturing and production industry
Flexible production and smart use of data is essential for fast customer and market responsiveness and profitability.
By promoting worker well-being and human technology interaction we ensure success in a changing work environment.
Advanced robotics and automation enable new and better way of working.
Agility has become a primary condition for competitiveness in all industrial domains due to increasing customisation requirements and rapidly changing global markets.
Manufacturing is the backbone of the European economy. Manufactured goods represent 83% of the European Union exports. Export plays a key role in creating growth and jobs, which supports investments in infrastructure and EU welfare. Manufacturing and production industries are undergoing rapid changes due increasingly to global market pace, massive tech disruption and higher customer expectations for customisation, speed, service, quality and price.
Future agile and flexible manufacturing
The future of manufacturing lies in being flexible and smart – in being capable of fast adaption to a wide variety of changing conditions, such as production volumes, and creating customised and new products with shorter lifecycles. Agile production integrates flexible processes, resources and material flows – all the physical activities at every production or service step on the value network.
European manufacturing systems need to be agile, resilient and adaptive to cope with rapidly changing market needs.
The information flows start from the first customer contact to design, planning, supply and manufacturing between actors of the value network, to delivery and services. Automation, robotics and human technology interaction are the key aspects towards customer responsiveness, productivity and sustainability.
Holistic agile manufacturing development with VTT
One of our customers, Naval Flowserve, was able to keep manufacturing in Finland through co-operation with VTT: “We have decreased manufacturing throughput time from six days to 2 hours due to automation for our client, as well as reduced the amount of manufacturing phases to half. We have also decreased manufacturing costs by 30% while improving product quality.”
We develop our customers’ production and other processes with technological, business and human aspects to fulfil the highest customer and technical demands. We are an impartial R&D partner from science-based feasibility reviews up to total revolution and implementation planning, while ensuring worker well-being and user acceptance.
Our customers have access to our state-of-the-art multidisciplinary know-how on technology as well as our commercial partner network. We develop flexible and reconfigurable production systems with advanced robotics, 3D printing, augmented reality, simulation, digitalisation of manufacturing, big data and artificial intelligence. The use of VTT expertise is not limited to just manufacturing. Development processes and technologies are applicable to other industrial sectors as well, for example to logistics hubs and process industry.
Digital design and manufacturing
In our digital design and manufacturing facilities, we develop solutions for virtual and digitised end-to-end product process. The development includes advanced custom designed robotic and mechatronic systems and covers also equipment for noise, vibration and fatigue fields.
Read about World Manufacturing forum
New ways of working through robotics
