Digital and connected manufacturing to make new products more efficiently, Artificial Intelligence and hyper-automation, the circular economy and personalised nutrition: these are some of the big tech trends which will mould 2021 says the Eurecat technology centre, a specialist in digital, industrial, biotech and sustainability technology transfer.
The current situation shaped by Covid-19 “has underscored the need for research and innovation to address new challenges and needs and also prompts us to embrace the vision of a much greener, digitalised and resilient Europe,” notes Daniel Casellas, Eurecat’s scientific director. “The idea is to equip production networks so they can respond quickly to emerging health, social, environmental and technological challenges in the future.”
In industry in 2021, the shift towards digital and connected factories to make new products more efficiently is expected to pick up pace. “Predictive analysis of historical data from the production chain reveals invaluable patterns for the company,” says Casellas. “The challenge is to mine Artificial Intelligence to develop complex manufacturing processes which process data in real time and make it possible to bring into play advanced materials to manufacture high added-value products.”
“Another obvious trend is Artificial Intelligence embedded in the technologies making up industrial processes so as to keep on evolving and make instant decisions without being in thrall to connectivity,” he adds.
“Manufacturing-oriented design is not a new field but it still needs to become much more ingrained in engineering firms’ everyday operations,” points out Ricard Jiménez, scientific director of Industrial Technologies at Eurecat. Plant data should feed back into design applications and vice versa in order to tap into a new world of possibilities. Jiménez believes that these opportunities “will greatly increase with the use of production plant virtualisation (digital twins of all processes) and the mass rollout of simulation.”
In 2021, “Artificial Intelligence will be pivotal and will drive the hyper-automation of all kinds of processes,” adds Maria Eugenia Fuenmayor, scientific director of Eurecat’s Digital Division. As a result of the pandemic, “it will be essential to help companies identify, interpret and adapt to people’s new behaviour patterns.” Plus Covid-19 means that “all the technology needed to support remote work and operations of all kinds will also be crucial.”
In 2021, “the circular economy will be the key to economic recovery, to transforming the economic model and to driving environmental quality and mitigating climate change,” points out Miquel Rovira, director of the Sustainability Division at Eurecat. From the business standpoint, circularity can extend the useful life of products and resources with three main action strands in eco-design, optimal use models which foster shared use, and smart repair and maintenance and recovery of value at the end of life with reuse and recycling. Here Eurecat will continue to work on the most significant environmental vectors in waste, water, air, soil, energy and its storage. Other core strands will be environmental impact assessment and drawing up circularity indicators together with adaptation to climate change, especially in coastal areas.
In biotech “we will see further advances towards more personalised and healthy nutrition geared towards devising functional foods and beverages which are specific to and healthy for groups of consumers based on factors including genetic and metabolic characteristics and lifestyle,” argues Francesc Puiggròs, scientific director of Eurecat’s Biotechnology Division. In the present scenario shaped by the battle against Covid-19, “we expect a surge in technological innovation in personalised nutrition as a strategy for tackling infectious diseases coupled with methods for identifying prognostic biomarkers” so as to develop nutritional strategies tailored to each profile on the basis of their propensity for severity.
