By David Graff, AAU Communication and Public Affairs

If Danish manufacturing companies are to be more competitive in the future, the circular and sustainable path is the obvious way to go. The 'Green Competitiveness' report from the Danish Industry Foundation recently made this clear - but according to Associate Professor Astrid Heidemann Lassen, head of the production section at the Department of Materials and Production, the foundation must be in place before the circular transition can spread:

“A successful circular transformation of Denmark’s manufacturing industry requires that companies first strengthen their ability to model, simulate, and analyze production systems and processes. This will also improve resilience, safety, efficiency, and flexibility in production,” she explains.

According to Astrid Heidemann Lassen, research is very clear that green transition goes hand in hand with competitiveness. But the transition is not just a question of potential gains on the bottom line:

“For many companies, it's about staying relevant, because as the Draghi report states: The Europe of the future will be poorer if we don't step up innovation, technology development, coordination, and investments now. It is also and not least about new forms of production.”

From research to concrete practice

It is mainly large companies that have embarked on the circular transition in Denmark, while many small and medium-sized companies are holding back.

“I believe - and our research suggests this - that many of them simply have a hard time envisioning how and why they should implement the transition,” says Astrid Heidemann Lassen.

She explains that while most Danish companies are aware of, among other things, reducing their own consumption of virgin materials, very few succeed in spreading the green initiatives further out in the supply chains.

Nor have many incorporated a process of taking back used products, disassembling them, cleaning them, reworking them, reassembling them, and sending them back to the market in the same quality as new products.

And it's not surprising, because products returned from the market vary greatly in terms of quality, load, age, and usability, and adapting your production to this requires both new knowledge and a complete rethink of the processes in the value chain and the production concept itself.

According to Astrid Heidemann Lassen, the answer is to continue working with companies to demonstrate, analyze, and document with data how the transition can be implemented. This must lead to concrete strategic directions and clear concepts and methods.

“The sustainable solutions must be well thought out and adaptable to the needs of the individual company before they can be turned into competitive advantages,” says Astrid Heidemann Lassen.

Funding to take the next step

At the end of 2024, the Department of Materials and Production received a number of positive messages from foundations about grants for projects that can give the green transition of manufacturing Denmark another boost.

“This includes the project ‘The Circular Factory’, which the Danish Industry Foundation supports, and where we create a national demonstration center to develop concrete solutions for fully circular production lines in collaboration with a number of companies,” explains Astrid Heidemann Lassen.

In total, 10-14 positions as e.g. assistant professor, postdoc, and PhD will be advertised in the production section's three research groups Robotics and Automation, Center for Industrial Production and Mass Customization during the spring.

“With these recruitments, our already strong research environment gets another boost, and I certainly expect that it will both benefit the companies in a very concrete way and create an even stronger knowledge foundation for future production,” concludes Astrid Heidemann Lassen.