Race4Scale – Development of automotive and motorsport -project’s final seminar was held on 24th of November 2022 at South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Kotka campus. The seminar was arranged as a hybrid event, meaning that you could attend the seminar on the spot or alternatively you could attend the seminar remotely.
The research which consisted of various workshops and events that were conducted during the project were reviewed during the seminar. The central theme in each workshop and event were inspecting and developing the different point of views and possibilities of automotive industry and the educational institutes of the industry. These procedures were examined by project manager Jarmo Kujanpää, RDI-specialist Jan Kettula and principal lecturer Mikhail Nemilentsev. Separate keynote speakers were invited to the seminar who were professor Heikki Liimatainen and university instructor Erika Kallionpää from Tampere University and doctoral student Nikhil Phadnis from LUT University.
Heikki Liimatainen is a leading scientist in the field of sustainable transport in Finland. He leads Transport Research Centre Verne at Tampere University. He has also been awarded for his merits in science communications in mass media. Erika Kallionpää has experience in several research projects related to transportation, logistics and supply chain management. Her research interests focus particularly on the environmental performance of supply chains, sustainability of logistics and customer value creation in supply chains. Nikhil Phadnis is a doctoral student in innovation management and consultant for fortune 1000 companies specializing in TRIZ methods in multiple domains for ex. energy, automobile, consumer products and Lifesciences and chemicals. He has experience in new product development, new process development, adjacent market identification and technology forecasting in different industries.
THE FINAL SEMINAR BEGINS: THE NEEDS OF TRANSPORT SYSTEM AND FUTURE LOGISTICS
The final seminar began at 10.15 AM with Jarmo Kujanpää giving a speech welcoming everyone, and he gave a brief summary of the program and introduced the keynote speakers. After Jarmo’s speech, professor Heikki Liimatainen from Tampere University was given the spotlight. His topic addressed how the current transport system causes negative environmental and social impacts and governments have set targets to remove these impacts by 2050. The needs and drivers for the transport transformation were discussed in the presentations, including digitalization, electrification and automation and the changes in behavior and decision making.
Heikki Liimatainen discussing the environmental impact of the transportation.
After Heikki finished his presentation, the turn was given to University Instructor Erika Kallionpää from Tampere University. Her topic addressed how logistics has faced many challenges and distractions during last years. The interesting question is that what is shaping the future logistics. In this presentation, the main future trends and targets affecting logistics were examined. The skills that logistics professionals will need in future were discussed as well.
TECHNOLOGY FORECASTING FOR AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
When Erika was done with her presentation, we had a short break. After the break it was time to continue with interesting topics as the next keynote speaker M.Sc. Nikhil Phadnis, doctoral student from LUT University stepped forward to give his presentation. His topic explored the approach of the VOP (Voice of the Product), a counter-intuitive approach to VOC (Voice of the Customer), that is used to discover the latent needs of the customer, resulting in better technology forecasts and reducing the risk of failed innovations for long-term innovation projects.
Nikhil Phadnis discussing how to identify the voice of the customer.
After Nikhil’s presentation, it was time for Jarmo Kujanpää to step in again. He reviewed the research executed during the project that consisted of so-called work packages. There were 6 work packages in total that included 17 tasks.
Jarmo Kujanpää reviewing the tasks executed during the project.
Teacher’s Week was one of the resulting events of the work packages, which was created in the cooperation with South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences Xamk and Kouvola Vocational Institute Eduko. The theme of the event was good practices in education. Teacher’s Week was arranged twice, both having interesting topics such as utilizing the modern technology in education and continuous learning.
A workshop named Futures Workshop was created during the project that was also arranged twice. The focal points of the workshops were to identify opportunities for competence development with new and emerging technologies related to virtual, augmented and mixed reality environments, and cross-border collaboration between the Kymi Valley and the Saint Petersburg region. Shared curriculum was piloted based on the previously mentioned cooperation.
Futures Lab Logistics was a series of workshops in which the theme was to identify possible future changes and asses their potential impact on the logistics industry.
Jan Kettula presenting the Futures Lab-concept.
Innocamp – Automotive Innovation Camp (AIC) was four-day experience for the student teacher-industry interaction in the cross-border context. Focus of the camp was the weak signals and disruptive technologies in the cross-border automotive and motosport industry. Students from the secondary and tertiary partner educational institutions organized in the Finnish-Russian multicultural and multidisciplinary groups solved multidisciplinary challenges of the automotive and motorsport industry. Kymiring customer and service selection profiling was utilized during the event.
Mikhail Nemilentsev presenting the results of the benchmarking studies and discussing the cross-border multidisciplinary curriculum.
RDI-specialist Jan Kettula and principal lecturer and Mikhail Nemilentsev were also presenting the previously mentioned tasks beside Jarmo Kujanpää.
Click here to view Jarmo, Jan, and Mikhail’s presentations.
Tatiana Talalaeva was also present via Zoom and she gave a short summary of the cooperation between LETI University and Race4Scale-project and presented feedback of the workshops that were performed as a result of the cooperation.
Click here to view Tatiana’s presentation.
Last but not the least speaker of the day was Sergei Kadiev, Head of the Kudrovo Children’s Engineering Center. He reviewed the workshops and innovation camps that were created during the project. More information of the said workshops and camps can be found on the project website.
The day was coming to an end, and it was time to close the seminar. Jarmo thanked participants and cooperation partners and encouraged everyone to visit Race4Scale-project’s website since every research and report can be found there along with other essential information.