Installation talks
It is part of the academic tradition that newly installed professors hold an inaugural lecture is open to the public. Yesterday the time had come for Tobias Larsson (Professor) and Ola Isaksson (Adjunct Professor) to talk about their research interests.
Adjunct Professor Ola Isaksson, Volvo Aero, began to share his views on the major challenges that exist when it comes to achieving effective virtual organizations in the aviation industry. He noted that climate change, population growth, and increasing air traffic combined with higher requirements on emissions reduction (mainly carbon dioxide / CO2 and NOx / NOx). In this perspective, it is easy to see the need for innovation in the aviation industry. How can companies manage these increasing demands while making a profit? Parts of the answer, he believes, is in the companies’ capacity to take more and better decisions in less time, which is why knowledge-driven and simulation-driven engineering work is so necessary.
Professor Tobias Larsson then followed up with introducing the product concept (and product development) is changing to not only include the hardware, but also services. An important aspect is to know more about what it means to develop the ‘functions’ rather than hardware, and how companies should be able to handle full life-cycle commitments example. maintenance and repair becomes an expense rather than an income for / the company providing the functional product. Hardware and services must be developed in parallel and the focus must be on customer needs, and the functions that realize value for those customers. Even in this context, is a knowledge-driven and simulation-driven approach is extremely important, because virtual organizations must become better at modeling and simulating long-term effects of early decisions in the product development process.
The colleagues at the Division of Functional Product congratulate Ola and Tobias to completing the final requirement for Professor appointments and we look forward to a fruitful collaboration in the future.
