Industry 4.0 and digitalisation

Profile

Our research approach is lean automation, meaning 3 things to us:

1. Lean the company before automating the right things
2. The solutions for SMEs have to be simple, easy to use and a good business for the companies and 
3. Lean automation, also referred to among scholars as autonomation, i.e., “automation with a human touch”, for which we believe that, in smart manufacturing, humans are a big asset in collaboration with the technology.

The purpose of our research is to transfer the newest knowledge about automation and digitalisation to local companies and together with the companies generate innovative solution that can make companies more productive and agile. Our mission is to make Industry 4.0 understandable and to challenge companies by innovative and disruptive solutions, both at their products and their production.

Services

Teach, inspire and collaborate with industry to generate those solutions that fit the individual companies.

• Lecturing on the topic of Industry 4.0 and digitalisation
• Workshops and hackathons on I4.0 and digitalisation
• I4.0 enablers (IOT, simulation, robots, VR/AR, Big data/analytics)
• Design and challenge your factory of the future
• Lean automation – automation with a human touch
• Collaborative factory design with industrial partners
• Adaptable and reconfigurable manufacturing solutions
• Operator 4.0

Labs and equipment

Innovation lab - Smart Learning Factory

The research is tested and communicated in the Innovation lab at SDU/MCI, where we test new technologies in the domains from product development/prototyping to operations. We name this the Smart Learning Factory in which we can demonstrate and test Industry 4.0 enabling technologies, focusing at easily accessible technologies and interfacing the technologies in the lean automation solutions. The Smart Learning Factory, as part of the Innovation lab, is a playground for research where we can present new digitalisation technologies. The physical setup consists of modular reconfigurable building blocks, with which we can remodel the systems. We focus on developing solutions together in collaboration.