Lifelong learning crucial to Swedish industry's competitiveness

The lack of expertise in advanced digitalisation is significant and threatens to slow down the pace and quality of Swedish innovation. How can we ensure lifelong learning, where our engineers and other experts develop the skills that Swedish industry needs to remain competitive? And how can we work together across organisational boundaries to meet the challenges of societal change?

"Sweden's ability to lead in digitalisation will have a major impact on all of us. It is crucial for our ability to cope with climate change, maintain our prosperity with good employment opportunities and ensure good living conditions throughout the country," says Katarina Noen, Head of Learning Sweden & Group Functions at Ericsson.

Some of Sweden's leading technology companies, together with Teknikföretagen and Vinnova, have launched the Advanced Digitalisation initiative, of which the Energy Optimisation Programme is one of the deliverables. The initiative aims to accelerate Sweden's ability to develop and use new technologies and services that are crucial for climate change, welfare and security.

Peer learning

In close collaboration with other programme stakeholders, RISE is responsible for the learning journey within the Energy Optimisation Programme, where a structure and environment for learning and sharing experiences has been established. The first pilot phase has now been completed and RISE will continue to support the programme in the next phase.

"As we got to know the target group and their experiences and preferences, we fine-tuned the approach. Being responsive, evaluating and adapting the learning methods along the way is key to success," says Kristina Söderberg, Learning Project Manager at RISE.

The target group in this case was 15 senior engineers, researchers, component, service and product developers from ABB, Ericsson, Saab and Volvo Group - all experts in their respective fields, but not necessarily in energy optimisation. Several of the participants commented that the opportunity to meet and discuss current issues together was very valuable.

"To tackle the big challenges facing society, we need to get better at working together across industry boundaries. Energy optimisation is a good example of an area where we need to join forces and continuously build expertise together, not in our own silos. A multi-ecosystem approach is needed to build a sustainable infrastructure for our future society. This is how we will create real improvements", says Anette Höglund, Strategy Execution Driver, Technology Management, CTO Office at Ericsson.

Together with Raman Yazdani Wetterberg, Feature Architect Energy Management at Volvo, and others, Anette has participated in five meetings over the past year with presentations and discussions on energy optimisation issues from different perspectives. The aim was to use real cases and problems that members face in their daily work related to energy optimisation, and between meetings they were given tasks to work on.

"Just talking to experts from other companies in a forum like this was much more valuable than I initially thought. Even though we work with different types of products and services, we are all part of the same development, where it is important to work together to strengthen Sweden's role in the innovation system and the competitiveness of Swedish industry," says Raman.

Combining learning expertise with domain knowledge

"RISE has an important role to play today, when the issue of skills supply has been highlighted as one of the biggest challenges facing industry and the public sector. In addition to our expertise and research in learning, we also have skills in facilitation and teaching. In addition, as Sweden's research institute, RISE has expertise in a number of areas that are crucial to the transformation of society, says Jannike Åhlgren, System Transformation Strategist at RISE.

In this case, expertise in learning has been combined with expertise in energy optimisation. RISE has many researchers and deep knowledge in several of the areas that make up the new ecosystem emerging between the traditional automotive and energy domains, such as AI, vehicles, power grids, 5G, system architecture, data management and platforms, vehicle-to-grid (V2G), power components, batteries and energy storage, user perspective, testing, simulation and integration.

"Increasing digitalisation offers significant opportunities for real-time knowledge in the system. From a broader perspective, this enables us to create entirely new solutions for energy optimisation and, for example, predictive maintenance. For a vehicle, energy optimisation can mean better information about what energy is available and where. In this way, driving and charging can be optimised. From a grid perspective, this can mean information about when vehicles are available for use from a frequency regulation point of view. All this requires a good connection for communication between vehicles and infrastructure", explains Anna Larsson, Head of Energy Conversion at RISE and facilitator of the Learning Journey for Energy Optimisation.

In an ecosystem, all players contribute value to the system, but all players must also be able to see the value created for their own business.

"Meeting with other companies on a common learning journey provides opportunities for new perspectives and new innovations, enabling us to build valuable systems for the future," says Anna Larsson.