The future of ITM

This entry was posted on by Annika Lilja.

Many of our faculty members, researchers and teachers are now in one way or the other involved in sketching the future of ITM via intensive work on the ITM development plan 2018-2023. Already now I choose to disclose a few quotes from the current development plan draft:

“The vision of our school is to be a preferred partner – nationally and internationally – for students, faculty, industry and society in the area of industrial engineering with particular focus on manufacturing, energy and transport. Our main mission is to be a leading contributor to the transition of this industry to a future sustainable state characterized by new product and service designs, new materials, new business models, renewable energy systems, recycling, reuse and remanufacture.“

“The School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM) graduates yearly 10% of all new MSc engineers in Sweden. These engineering graduates constitute our most direct and powerful impact force on society. No other educational establishment in Sweden has such a large opportunity to influence the society through industrial engineering. With this comes an enormous responsibility to make sure that our graduates possess the right knowledge, skills and capabilities. Our School is determined to take the opportunity and accept the responsibility to firmly develop our education programs in the direction of sustainability.”

The coming steps regarding our development plan is that a draft will be distributed to the School’s Strategic Council and to all faculty members, researchers and teachers by the end of this week. And in the following week, the draft will be discussed in the Strategic Council meeting on June 19 and at the Faculty Club meeting on June 20. A finalized version will be submitted to our president by June 30.

The ITM Strategic Council has from this spring new representatives from the School; from our faculty the new representatives are Viktoria Martin (EGI), Per Lundqvist (EGI), Martin Törngren (MMK) and Cali Nuur (INDEK). The technical/administrative side is represented by Caroline Ahlstedt (INDEK). As external members we have Rachel Pettersson, research manager at Jernkontoret, Jonas Mann, vice president R&D industrial technique at Atlas Copco, and Per Grünewald, founding partner, Pegroco Invest. KTH management is represented by Vice president for digitalisation, Jan Gulliksen, as an adjunct member.

Equality and equal treatment are core values of KTH. An equality office has been set up centrally at KTH led by Anna Wahl, Vice President for gender equality and values. As we all know, Anna is also professor in gender, organization and management at ITM. The current KTH focus on gender equality has also led to quite substantial new resources to increase and strengthen the research and education on gender equality, led by Anna Wahl and her team. To enforce equality and equal treatment under the slogan “One KTH” every school has appointed a responsible person (JMLA) to monitor and supervise our development towards a more equal working place and towards a more equal society. The ITM management team has appointed professor Sofia Ritzén as our JMLA.

Finally I wish you all and nice and equal summer vacation!

Jan Wikander, Head of School

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Ongoing educational issues and nice example of student project

This entry was posted on by Annika Lilja.

Finally we have reached the end of the spring semester, after a very intense period. The last couple of weeks my time has been filled with both examination, research conferences and the graduation ceremony for our master of science students in the City Hall. During the graduation ceremony the presentation of the diplomandi was mixed with musical entertainment by the KTH academic orchestra conducted by director musices Gunnar Julin and the student choir. It was a very impressive and beautiful arrangement, I really appreciated the opportunity to present and congratulate all of ITMs graduates 🙂

Coming closer to summer vacations it’s time to summarize all P4 courses, complete the work of writing and correcting all the examination and enjoy the knowledge gained by all our excellent students when conducting their master thesis projects. But this week has also offered other exciting and interesting education-focused events. For instance I got to see the impressive work done by the students in the Energy Management course (MJ2410), since they presented their project results in Sing-sing (where my office is located). The students have studied each Tokyo district, during the course, to propose solutions for a more energy efficient Tokyo in the year of 2040. The initiative is based on a collaboration between KTH and the Gadelius company (which operates in the interface between Sweden and Japan). The students proposed creative and innovative solutions based on a holistic approach in order to reduce the energy use in buildings, increasing the amount of renewable energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. On June 4th, five groups presented their solutions to Japanese ambassadors, KTH representatives, external companies and the Gadelius company. The two winning groups won a trip to Tokyo in September to present their solution proposals for various representatives from companies and representatives for Tokyo City.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA

Here’s a picture from the event:

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The Presidents’ Visit

This entry was posted on by Annika Lilja.

On May 9, Sigbritt and Mikael visited the School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM). The day began in Södertälje and ended in the M block.

In anticipation of the visit, the Dean of School had recorded video greeting welcoming Sigbritt and Mikael and outlining the strategic initiatives ITM aims to accomplish before 2019, as well as school-specific investment needs.

The Dean of School presented the necessary and quality-driven expansion of the school’s research. The intention is that this expansion will occur within three or four main categories:

  • Research and educational infrastructure
    • The innovation arena
  • Strategic research areas
    • Circular economy
    • Industrial digitization for sustainability and innovation
    • Energy-efficient industry
    • Advanced manufacturing
    • Carbon dioxide-free metal production
  • New research centers
    • MERIT – Critical edge computing for industrial application
    • Mechanics and materials design
    • Live-in-Lab
    • Basic support for potential KIC Manufacturing
  • Department-specific focus areas

The day began in Södertälje, at the Department of Sustainable Production Development. In preparation for a little surprise later in the day, Sigbritt received a full-body scan upon arrival.  One of the issues discussed in the course of the morning was “the challenge of making KTH Södertälje better known to the outside world.”

Thereafter, Sigbritt and Mikael continued to Campus Valhallavägen, where they were greeted by members of the school leadership. The school’s heads of department had recorded a video presenting each department’s vision and outlining challenges to achieving their objectives.

The heads of department and the departments’ video recordings were uploaded to Canvas as a course date, and Sigbritt was enrolled as a student. We watched the videos together, and discussed the departments’ various visions and challenges.

After this, service center staff arrived in electric cars and drove Sigbritt and Mikael up to the departments of Production Engineering, Machine Design, and Energy Technology. There they visited the Machine Design and Industrial Production prototype labs. Sigbritt also received her surprise: a “small mini-Sigbritt” made of various materials and based on the scan that had been made that morning. The visit ended with a visit to EGI and its Solar Lab facility.

After all this, the tired crowd of colleagues headed home to enjoy the long weekend.

The school leadership was very happy and proud to have had the opportunity to showcase ITM over the course of an entire day and to communicate the school’s vision and challenges.

Everyone at ITM hopes that Sigbritt and Mikael also enjoyed the day.

/Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration

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ITM PhD student conference

This entry was posted on by Annika Lilja.

A Wednesday and Thursday in April we had the annual ITM PhD student conference at Skogshem and Wijk on Lindingö. The theme this year was Research skills from different perspectives. Linda Söderlindh gave a very inspiring combined lecture/workshop on Presentation skills (see picture). Greta Quesada Richardson & Margareta Fathli informed us about Open Access publishing. In the evening before a very nice dinner, there was a poster session with the goal to bridge the gap between different research fields i.e. find a PhD student colleague in another area where there is some overlap in interest. This year Linda gave feedback on the posters to as many students as she could.

The second day started with an open-air quiz led by Andrea de Giorgio from the THS PhD Chapter. On the picture below the participants try to form a square of a string that they all hold on to. Not so easy since they have to keep their eyes shut and only orally communicate how the problem should be solved.

After the outdoor activity Mats Magnusson (PA for the Machine Design Doctoral Program) gave a short presentation about the recent survey, the result was quite similar to last year´s. We will now look into the result in more detail. The last lecture was given by Sven Ove Hansson, Ethics in research, a subject that is always highly relevant and interesting.

Thank you all lecturers, PAs and participants!

/ Malin Selleby, FA

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Ongoing in the education focused development work

This entry was posted on by Annika Lilja.

The main focus for the strategic education development work at ITM-school right now is to identify, formulate and discuss the educational parts of the development plan. This work will be executed during May through two workshops (on May 8th and May 29th ), and if anyone is interested in participating in these please send an e-mail to me anna.jerbrant@indek.kth.se.

Besides that, we also have a number of more operational issues to work with, for instance regarding the master and batchelor thesis projects (that are coming to an end in May/June) as well as discussions about the results of this year’s admission of new students to our programs.

Beyond this, I hope you’ve seen the interesting article in Campi regarding the so called PriU-groups? The initiation of these groups is based on a need to strengthen the collegial influence within the decision making focused on KTHs education. The purpose of the PriU-groups (that where initiated at the beginning of last year) are to gather faculty with educational responsibility in order to find new perspectives and solutions for a lot of different kind of problems. The organizers of the PriU-groups have (since April) made sure that the groups are open to all staff – teachers and administrators – who feel committed and want to be involved and change our education. The aim is to strengthen the quality of education, by taking advantage of more of the expertise within the entire KTH organization, and therefore groups focus on everything from digitization and internationalization to working life and practical issues such as premises, schedules and planning. Read more about it in Campi.

In Campi you can also read about the new manual that KTH has provided that is focused on how teachers can achieve the best effect when making filmed lectures online. The interest in e-learning has increased significantly during the last couple of years, largely due to KTH’s initiative on MOOCs, massive open online courses, which has enabled that a large number of lecture videos has been produced. Jonas Thorén, at KTH’s media department, who produced many of the films, has therefore produced a handbook with the purpose to help teachers with presentation design and video production. Very interesting! If you want to read more about it go to Campi.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA

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