New Smart Industry Lab Opens in Sweden

According to a recent release, Stena Industry Innovation Laboratory (SII-Lab) at Chalmers campus Lindholmen, Sweden has opened. The facility is a testing lab for digitalization and future jobs in industry, and production researchers Johan Stahre and Åsa Fast-Berglund said in the release that anyone is invited to work on projects there, including: students, researchers and companies.

The lab was designed to give Sweden a new environment to show how the smart factories of the future could look and will be used to work on the development of digitized industrial projects and for accelerating the digital transformation of industry and society.

“More and more companies are moving their manufacturing to Sweden, and the Stena Industry Innovation Lab now makes that even easier. The project sits well with what the government wants to achieve in strengthening the conditions for Swedish industry to develop, manufacture and compete in the world market,” said Mikael Damberg, Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, who opened the national test lab.

"Digitalization is changing industry quickly, but the job will not disappear. At the heart of the center there are still people – and with that, all the expectations we have of modern workplaces,” said Professor Johan Stahre, who, together with Åsa Fast-Berglund, is responsible for Chalmers’ new focus on industrial digitalization.

At the lab, new innovations and business models will see the light of the day for the first time. In this environment, which is important for the training of future engineers and digitalization experts, a large number of Master’s theses are ongoing. For industry, the test-lab is long-awaited. Efficiency improvements in manufacturing are taking place, resulting in increased flexibility, improved quality, reduced costs, environmental and energy gains.

“All of this can be done anywhere in the world. So this type of lab activity allows Sweden to get back to leadership in areas where we have lost it, and to maintain and further strengthen the areas where we are already leading. This is our chance as an industrial nation," said Alrik Danielson, CEO, SKF.