"Powertrain Manufacturing for Heavy Vehicles Application Lab" in Stockholm
Four years ago, a consortium of powertrain manufacturers and research institutions was established in Sweden with a view to strengthening and securing the competitiveness of its industrial members. The Powertrain Manufacturing for Heavy Vehicles Application Lab was established on 13 September 2016 by the Fraunhofer IPT, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the Swerea KIMAB and Swerea IVF research institutes (members of the research network RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden), the Technical University of Chalmers and the industrial manufac-turers Scania, Volvo Trucks and Sandvik. Through the projects of the new centre, the partners will develop technologies for the mass production of components in the powertrains of heavy-duty vehicles and improve conventional production processes.
On 26 April 2017, the consortium started a separate German-Swedish initiative to support and encourage exchanges of Industry 4.0 technologies and of new ideas of how to implement them, called the “Swedish-German Testbed for Smart Production”. The joint venture had been inspired by a panel discussion to mark the opening of the technology forum which was jointly hosted by the German-Swedish Chamber of Commerce and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) and which was attended by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. In their joint declaration, the governments of both countries had emphasized the importance of four research areas: life sciences, production and materials, mobility, and energy / the environment. The test beds are designed as pilot lines for the assessment of innovative smart products or production systems and for the development of ways to combine them into efficiently operating networks.