6/18/12

Factories of the Future - Towards a New Industrial Revolution



From the 19th till the 21st of June next over 160 high profile international speakers from industry, government and research will meet at Industrial Technologies 2012 (Aarhus, Denmark)* to discuss visions for European Research and Industry in 2020. They will reveal the economic and technological impact of industrial technologies with topics including low emission transportation, integrated systems, resource efficiency as opportunity, innovations inspired by nature, improving the environment, energy generation and storage, printing goes 3-D, healthcare and construction.


Amongst the speakers are also some recognized people from Belgian companies such as Umicore, Solvay, Materialise and Melotte. All sessions aim to discuss the drivers, conditions, opportunities and activities in specific industrial areas to strive in global competition.

The session Reducing Time to Market: From Prototype to Production reviews some examples of prototype and pilot facilities that are helping companies to speed the deployment of advanced technologies. A challenge inherent in industrial technologies is the requirement to take a research breakthrough and scale this up to large scale, cost effective mass production.

Mario Fleurinck CEO of Melotte and Founder of InnoCrowd (BE) has been asked to address the EU High Level Group, a selected club of European opinion and policy leaders. Mario will explain how Direct Digital Manufacturing allows creating objects with minimal waste “growing” them layer-by-layer and the impact on our environment by means of an extended Life Cycle Analysis input. He will also pay attention to the leverage on local employment and business organization of the new eco system called InnoCrowd.   

*The “Industrial Technologies 2012” event is supported by the European Commission Directorate for Research and Innovation and takes place during the Danish Presidency of the European Council.