Produktion2030’s Graduate School in Canada: Hike and human-centered production

DAY 5 of our Produktion2030 course to Canada!

Some of us started the day with a little hike at 6:00 to catch the sunrise for a last time at Mount Royal in Montréal! It was magical.

The first study visit of our trip week 2 was to Pratt & Whitney Canada. At the site, they produce airplane engines, and we learned about their traditional production and the newest department doing advanced manufacturing. We also visited the factory part of the advanced manufacturing department that produces the same product but uses advanced technologies and automation. In that way, one operator can take care of several machines, performance increases, and they decrease the non-value-adding tasks for humans.

They highlighted that the human is still the most important asset, which is why they trained the operators to be able to work with new tasks, and also e.g. to be able to do continuous improvement with the help of data collected through sensors. We also learned about their ongoing project to launch a hybrid-electric driven plane. One of the main challenges is the complexity and the weight. They pointed out, that in airplanes there are 3 important measures: weight, weight, and weight. It will be interesting to see how the airplane industry evolves and when we will have fully or hybrid-electric planes commercialized!

In the afternoon, we visited the very cool Montréal office of the company Centiro! Centiro was found in Borås and delivers software solutions and data scientist services to various industries in need of support in their supply chains. It was super interesting to see how Centiro can help their customers in creating supply chain awareness and control, by reporting freight costs, emissions, and delivery performance and in that way make their customers more resilient. Centiro is a big believer in research and has through the years had many collaborations with Chalmers and other Swedish universities to create knowledge together.

The office in Montréal was opened for its strategic location – as we learned before, Montréal has a lot of skilled people within AI. We also discussed the differences between Europe and Canada when it comes to sustainability and customer behaviors, and one of the key takeaways was that Canada will probably soon go in the same direction like Europe with laws to force companies to become sustainable, but that’s not the case yet and right now, the hope is that some big companies could be leaders in the sustainability transition and show others that it’s possible.

Finally, our hosts told us how happy they are about Centiro as a workplace and that Centiro even has won several prices for being a good workplace for their employees! Great visit!

Produktion2030’s Graduate School is visiting Canada. Greta Braun, PhD Student at Chalmers, shares her insights and thoughts during the trip.