A talk about what’s happening in the world of manufacturing and production systems research with Lennart Malmsköld, University West. And as a matter of fact, he is one of my former teachers (yeah, some hundred years ago or so…). So instead of him asking me a lot of questions from those days, I had the opportunity to ask him!

Talking with Lennart, I think the future of manufacturing is super-exciting! It is about data, collaborative robots and with the much improved technology the frontier of automating with flexibility is up for grabs.

And is actually local/inhouse manufacturing becoming an advantage?! Insourcing production is happening, I would believe that is also part of the complexity of production systems, need for skills and competence and the pandemic is also part of disrupting the value chains.

And sorry for my mix up, I meant of course the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), in terms of statistics (ifr.org)... Here is a graph on robot density from IFR:

And did you know that the five major markets for industrial robots are China, Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea and Germany. These countries account for 76% of global robot installations. The electrical/electronics industry is the new king, overtaking automotive in amount of new robots installed. (Again statistics from IFR).

Education systems and courses are also being adapted, listen to what Lennart has to tell about the new opportunities at University West.

Thanks for the insights, I enjoyed this talk very much.

/Mika

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