On 17 September, the Product Development Research Lab (PDRL) took part in Technology Day 2026, arranged by RISE together with Blekinge Institute of Technology and the Techtank cluster. The day brought manufacturing companies in the region together with researchers around sheet metal forming and the technologies growing around it – automation, AI and digitalisation. BTH was one of the three inviting organisations behind the event, and represented by Associate Professor Shafiqul Islam and PhD candidate Nils Kopp.
The programme opened with short introductions from each of the three organisations, moved through a block on technology trends, and closed with a joint session on how companies get into research and development projects.
Shafiqul Islam closed the day together with Daniel Wiklund (RISE). His talk, “From challenge to competence”, set out three routes for a company to work with BTH. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis worker over one semester: low cost, low risk, and fresh eyes on a problem the company defines. A doctoral student over four to five years, academic or industrial, which builds lasting capability and competence inside the company. And externally co-funded research projects, where the funding is found together.
Two doctoral projects illustrated the point. Alexander Barlo (PhD from BTH PDRL, now at DTU ) works on sustainable and intelligent manufacturing processes, drawing data-driven insights from automotive manufacturing.
Nils Kopp, starting autumn 2026, works with Volvo Cars within the EU project CiSMA on predicting sheet metal forming quality – a step towards Industry 5.0, where technology supports the engineer’s judgement rather than replacing it.
The closing message was the triple helix in practice: universities, industry and European research programmes working on the same problem, with a student in the middle.
