Application driven digitalized materials development renews Finnish Industry
Two large industry-driven DIMECC innovation programs led by Spinverse have successfully boosted both science and competitivity of the manufacturing industry in Finland through application-driven digitalized material R&D&I.
DIMECC BSA (Breakthrough Steels and Applications) and DIMECC HYBRIDS (Hybrid Materials) programs run parallelly realized together unique industry-driven public-private partnership (PPP) co-operation involving 68 companies, tens of research groups and 38 inter-linked Doctoral projects of the DIMECC Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School built within the programs. Tackling critical industrial research questions through modern material science and modelling based on concrete application needs this intensive joint work has produced a bunch of tremendous novel material solutions and created new multidisciplinary competence for the needs of industries such as metals, mechanical engineering, transportation, cleantech, energy and construction.
Even though the two 3.5 years DIMECC programs are currently ending the results will create significant longer-term impacts. The intensive co-operation has led to great amount of results in multiple fields including e.g. +300 scientific publications, + 60 Theses, +10 patents achieved together and development of a variety of specific novel material solutions meeting the stringent needs in demanding applications in industries such as metals, mechanical engineering, cleantech, energy, process and transportation. These together with the multidisciplinary competences and knowledge platform created are important assets for the renewal of the Finnish manufacturing industry.
According to program manager Markku Heino from Spinverse, especially the results of digital material development offer significant benefits and new opportunities for the industry.
”Digitalized materials development has shown the possibility to cut the product development time even to a half and improve the predictability and reliability of materials and components in challenging environments. We have implemented the concept in practice to serve real problem solving in our industry-driven projects. As a result, a new multi-disciplinary knowledge platform and a set of novel, competitive, sustainable and energy efficiency material solutions have been developed to boost Finnish export industry”, says DIMECC BSA & HYBRIDS program manager Markku Heino from Spinverse.
More than 60 companies from various value chains and fields have been involved in this highly cross-technological co-creation activity. The research expertise has been provided by top Finnish research groups and selected high level international partners. A special element has been the industry-driven DIMECC Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School, built within the programs and set to develop and implement digital material research concept and related competence for the industry. The 38 doctoral students have worked with each other, the top-notch senior Finnish and international scientists and key industry experts - hands-on solving the complex research challenges intensively together.
CEO of DIMECC Harri Kulmala emphasizes the importance of companies in joint research. “If we want to raise the level of science in Finland, companies are needed to be involved which might be surprising for someone. However, according to international analysis, the amount of citations of scientific articles are more than double when authors from both companies and academia are present. Often citations act as an assessment for the level of the publication. Field-Weighted Citation Index is in highly developed countries 2,5 times higher for articles co-authored with industry people compared to publications made by an academic researcher alone. Therefore, the DIMECC innovation ecosystem through which the companies and academic researchers are brought to co-operate for research, development and innovations, is proven to raise the level of science”, comments the CEO of DIMECC Oy Harri Kulmala.
DIMECC BSA & HYBRIDS innovation programs run by the professional Spinverse program management have shown great results with high impact both in science and industry. Well defined need-based research problems, systematically built common research agenda and involving relevant committed partners with right roles and expertise are key success factors for such multi-party programs.
Read the Press Release.
Final publications:
DIMECC BSA Final publication
DIMECC HYBRIDS Final publication
More information about the programs:
DIMECC BSA
DIMECC HYBRIDS
More information about the results of the programs:
DIMECC BSA
DIMECC HYBRIDS
DIMECC Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School