International Production and Japan, a state of the art study

International Production and Japan, a state of the art study

Project time: 2017 – 2018

Budget: 260 000 kr

Målet var att förstå de utmaningar som den svenska och japanska industrin står inför studiebesök.

Manufacturing provides an important institutional foundation for learning and developing process skills, and enterprises which have capabilities that are intertwined with research are most important to the country’s economic growth. Hence benchmarking some of the manufacturing best practices from industries around the world would help in identifying improvement opportunities and create a competitive environment within the organization.
The main purpose of the PhD course “International Production” is to bring out the manufacturing practices from various industries globally and to provide an extensive report of the on-going methods. A group of PhD students from various Swedish universities visited some of the leading manufacturing companies in Sweden and Japan, to provide a comparative study of the manufacturing styles employed in the two countries based on the following focus areas:

• Digitalization and Industry 4.0
• Key Performance Indicators and Sustainability
• Quality Assurance and Integrated Product and Production Development
• Research Integration/Institutes
• Production Processes

This report provides a detailed explanation of the similarities and differences in the manufacturing companies between the two countries. With 23 PhD students and 17 industrial visits (both national and international), this overview report aims to provide a guideline for strategists and engineers in manufacturing planning and development. This course is a part of Produktion2030, a strategic innovation program supported by VINNOVA (Swedish Energy Agency and Formas). We would like to thank VINNOVA Strategic Vehicle Research and Innovation (FFI), Sustainable Production Programme and VINNOVA Production2030 Strategic Innovation Area for funding this course.

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