The ITM management team has for a while discussed the importance of strengthening the links and communication between the line organization and the education dimension. A working group with representation of the PA:s, directors of study, education administrators and line managers has during 2016 worked out a draft basis for new Rules of procedure for how to operate our educational programs. Based on this, a new organisation structure has been decided upon. This decision was recently communicated via our intranet, just as we always we do with important news within the School. The draft of the rules of procedure will now be further elaborated in the new GU (Grundutbildningsutskott) which replaces the former UN (Utbildningsnämnd). The time line is that new Rules of procedure should be decided upon and in operation before the fall semester 2017.

Our new president, Sigbritt Karlsson, has announced that the KTH Board has initiated the work towards a new KTH Development plan. It is preliminary said that the plan should cover the period 2018-2023 and that a close to final version should be available for the board meeting in October. Ideas on structure and content have not yet been communicated but a likely focus might be on three pillars; equality, internationalization and sustainable development which Sigbritt already has communicated.

As was mentioned in my last blog the annual ITM leaders’ conference took place on January 11-12 and was focused two things:

1. Some first creative discussions as a basis for the next ITM development plan. A few keywords from all the group-work are: Utilizing school synergy; efficiency in support functions; impact strategies; ITM common technical or non-technical cores in research; digitalization; big data; facilities, environment and space for better synergy; culture, operations and activities for better synergy.
2. Half a day with professional external expertise to learn and discuss how we can improve our working environment in order to reduce negative stress among all personnel.

Finally, two new tentative policies which might be introduced within ITM:

• All employees should use the Outlook calendar for planning time, and the calendar should be open (for time slots, but not content) within ITM.
• The default configuration for internet browsers will be the ITM intranet.

Let’s see if we get some reactions to these tentative policies!

All the best,

Jan Wikander, Dean of School

We are approaching Christmas and New Year’s Eve and I take the opportunity thank all ITM employees, students and scholarship fellows for all the strong engagement and valuable contributions during 2016. My hope is that the we all during the coming two weeks find enough time to relax, to practice our hobbies and to enjoy being with families and friends.

The annual ITM leaders’ conference which gathers almost all staff members having a management role within ITM takes place on January 11-12. Except fostering improved leadership, the ambition with the 2017 conference is to initiate the strategic work towards our next development plan. Our new president, Sigbritt Karlsson, has announced that the work with the next KTH development plan will start early 2017. It is important that we are well prepared to contribute to this work, and to deliver constructive criticism when necessary. The conference will make use of some background material which might serve as an inspiration, but also as external contexts that we need to consider when formulating our strategic plans. Here I would like to share one piece of this background material, namely the KTH Utbildningskatalog 2026/2027 .

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

/Jan Wikander
Dean of School

Yesterday there was an award ceremony to thank our president Peter Gudmundson for his 9 years at the rudder of KTH. Labans Hage – the small area between Brinellvägen 8 and 10 – was renamed in Peter’s honour to Peters Hage, and a nice piece of art was installed reflecting Peter’s background as an elite ice-hockey player.

The first KTH Management group meeting with our new president Sigbritt Karlsson takes place on Monday afternoon. She has already announced that her ambition is to have more of strategic discussions at those meeting, and little less of just unilateral information flow. Information can be passed on more efficiently by other means, she says. The topic of discussion at this first meeting will be the “conditions and situation for young researchers”. And the corresponding background material is:

Early-career researchers need fewer burdens and more support and
Young scientists under pressure: what the data show

Another topic that our new president most likely will bring to the table is a new development plan for KTH from 2018 and onwards. For ITM, this topic will be one of the main points of discussion at the annual ITM leader’s conference which takes place January 11-12. The KTH and School development plans 2013-2016 were extended with one year due to the change of presidents. For ITM we made only minor changes to the previous plan except for a new section entitled Specific initiatives which covers a number of new strategic School initiatives which have resulted from, and been developed under, the ITM Academic Development Plan 2013‐2016. You find this plan under our intranet pages.

On Wednesday this week we had the last formal discussion with the former (by Monday) president, and this ended up in a signed ITM Activity contract (Verksamhetsuppdrag) for 2017. After some rather tough negotiations we managed to almost reach the targeted level for new initiatives (faculty positions) while preserving the funding for some “extraordinary initiatives” which we have negotiated during the year. Examples of those are cash funding for PMH and extra faculty funding during the build-up period at our Södertälje campus.

As we all have noticed, the winter is here and I hope for a cross country première during the weekend! Physical exercise in any form is good for us, so please check out the ITM Wellness activities and the ITM Calendar on our intranet.

/ Jan Wikander
Dean of School

… with some good news. Already in my last blog post we celebrated a prestigious research contract with SFF in the area of material science. Now it is time to celebrate the next: our VINNEX centre Hero-m, also in the area of material science, has succeeded in securing an additional five years of substantial funding in very tough competition. Hero-m is successfully led by professor Annika Borgenstam. It was also very timely that our developments in Södertälje have been successfully strengthened by the fact that we are now a partner in the VINNEX centre HELIX hosted by Linköping University. HELIX and Hero-m are two of the total of five VINNEX centres that were granted five years continuation. Finally, we should highlight that the CECIS centre at INDEK is a partner in a new Mistra funded research program on how financial markets and actors can contribute to sustainable societal development. The program – Mistra Financial Systems – is led by Handelshögskolan and operated in collaboration with national as well as international partners. Professor Hans Lööf is responsible from the ITM-side.

There are probably several other initiatives that are worth celebrating, so please give me a hint…

Some departments are expanding. Right now the most urgent need is to find extra space for the departments of Energy Technology and Production Engineering. The solution to this is that our education administration office (utbildningskansliet) will move from Brinellvägen 68 to Lindstedtsvägen 3, level 6. The move will take place during the summer, so from August 1st the office is fully functional at the new location. But don’t worry, Expnord will remain at its current location and continue its development.

Another change about to happen within our educational system is that the organisation for how we manage and operate our education programs will be reshaped. The current way of operating has been more or less the same for many years despite the fact the education program structure has changed with BSc degrees, master programs and an extensive internationalization and thereby has become a lot more complex. The ambition with the new structure is to achieve a more transparent way operation, a better integration and communication between the program dimension and line organization, and more clear delegations and responsibilities for the different academic and administrative roles within education.

In the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2012) the ITM School achieved reasonably good results. A point that was made by one of the review panels was that we could gain a lot by better integration over department borders. In particular this was pointed out between the departments of Production Engineering and Machine Design. This, together with urgent needs on the one hand from department expansions, and on the other hand from needs of our education programs, have triggered a recently started project to modernize our premises at Valhallavägen. Sofia Ritzén coordinates this but more concretely the project is operated by KTH MBA and White Arkitekter.

Last, but certainly not least, have very nice summer vacation!

Jan Wikander, dean, the last blogger of the spring semester, but stay tuned, we will be back!

First and foremost we should congratulate Professor John Ågren and the MSE Department for the new research contract with SSF. The title of the funded project is “Sintring av inhomogena strukturer för förbättrad prestanda” and the total project budget is 31 million SEK. Congratulations!

KTH takes now a number of integrated initiatives that go across department and school borders. The funding of those initiatives comes from KTH balanced capital which over the last few years has accumulated a bit more than necessary. The ITM School hosts one of these initiatives – namely the one on Circular economy (CE), a concept which recently has caught a lot of interest because it focuses sustainable development issues in a business context. The European Commission is investing (in a broad sense) remarkably in circular economy (e.g. € 650 million in Horizon 2020 and € 5.5 billion under the structural funds). Essentially, the focus of circular economy is twofold:

1. To close the materials cycle in a business system with reuse and recycling of products, components and materials for increasing resource efficiency and reducing environmental impact.
2. To replace an industrial logic in which the basic principle is that materials and labour are priced, with another logic in which the function and benefit to the customer is the basis for value and pricing.

The KTH (or ITM if you wish) initiative on CE has an overall budget of 22 million SEK if we include the assistant professorship on Resource efficient business models for recycling of materials (one of the 12 prestigious assistant professorships that KTH announced more than a year ago) to which ITM recently has appointed Andreas Feldmann at the Department of Industrial Economics and Management – Congratulations Andreas! The goal of our CE initiative is that KTH during the time of the four-year funding period will establish a centre-like structure with substantial external funding for research and that corresponding education activities have been established.  The initiative includes also the CHE, ABE and CSC Schools but is led and coordinated by ITM.

In my last blog the ITM Core Values were given in Swedish, and an English translation was promised to come, and here it is:

ITM’s Core Values

The ITM School has a value system based on

• democracy, equality, human rights and freedom, free speech and open discussion. Gender equality and rejection of all forms of discrimination raises both the quality of our institution and our working environment, and is therefore an integral part of ITM’s core values.
• equal treatment in terms of rights, conditions, opportunities and obligations, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity or expression, religion or belief, disability, social background, sexual orientation or age.

Important corner-stones for ITM’s continued development are

• that diversity, equality and equal treatment are important in order to develop ITM as an attractive and successful workplace where everyone is given opportunities to develop and to contribute to good results.
• that education and research can and should contribute to better living conditions and a peaceful society, and meet the requirements of ecological, social and economic sustainability. As part of a leading technical university, the ITM School has a special responsibility to develop the knowledge needed to promote such sustainable development.

Jan Wikander, Dean of School