Machinery, materials and production
The Finnish metal and engineering industry rests on a foundation of robust production technology expertise that goes back to the forest industry, paper machine design, the mining industry and shipbuilding.
Finnish companies and research teams are world leaders in a variety of fields, including:
- Intelligent machines
- Project-based business and logistics
- Production technology
- Product technology, industrial design, user interfaces
- New, hard steel grades
- Design tools, modelling and simulation
Strong, specialized clusters have emerged in the sector, for instance in the areas of metal refining, mobile machinery development, mineral crushing processes and the maritime industry.
A new Strategic Centre for Science Technology and Innovation, FIMECC Oy – Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster, was set up to boost strategic research in metals and engineering industries. Its research programmes increase and deepen cooperation between companies, universities and research institutes in the field.
Nanotechnology and functional materials will open up new opportunities
Nanotechnology and functional materials have been selected as one of the strategic cross-cutting competence areas in Finland. The national development strategy is strongly influenced by the needs of the main Finnish industry clusters: ICT, the forest cluster, metal products and mechanical engineering, and chemicals. Energy and health are emerging areas of application.
There are currently over 4,000 researchers in Finland working with materials research, and companies are actively involved in the development of applications. For example, the number of Finnish companies using nanotechnology has more than tripled over the last four years.
Nanotechnology and Functional Materials research and development is spearheaded by two Tekes programmes: