Digitalisation Campaign
by the province of Upper Austria
The digitalisation campaign is the Upper Austrian programme for the digital future of Upper Austria. The implementation is coordinated by Business Upper Austria - the Upper Austrian Business Agency. Digitalisation is firmly anchored as an issue that affects all fronts in the strategic and economic research programme Innovative Upper Austria 2020. It concerns every fields of action and makes a significant contribution to achieving the objectives of the strategic programme.
"Digitalisation is a major innovation factor for our economy. It presents all our industries with huge challenges, while at the same time opening up new opportunities for economic development - large and small alike. Attractive framework conditions for people and companies ensure that Upper Austria remains the most dynamic economic region in Austria. Our region has strong digital competencies and resources. Innovative companies, open-minded and dedicated specialists who are keen to stay ahead and make Upper Austria one of the leading digital regions in Europe. With our comprehensive digitalisation campaign we want to make sure that no opportunities are missed in using the digital transformation to make us even stronger as a business location."
Thomas Stelzer
Governor of Upper Austria
Markus Achleitner
State Minister for Economy
Current digitalisation campaign projects (excerpt):
Mechanical engineering companies are facing great challenges due to increasing digitalization. They are increasingly required to provide customers with machines and facilities in ever shorter cycles with the greatest possible flexibility and quality. A promising approach to increasing efficiency is to map the value chain, or parts of it, using digital twins.
The mechatronics cluster of Business Upper Austria - OÖ Wirtschaftsagentur GmbH takes up this challenge as part of the "DIGI-TWIN" project. The objective is to improve the use and application of digital twins and the corresponding increase in efficiency throughout the entire value-added process in Upper Austrian machinery and plant construction companies (in particular SMEs). This is intended to secure and increase competitiveness in the long term.
Grants are to be used to make widespread broadband Internet a reality in rural areas by 2022. The broadband office was founded by the Upper Austrian Ministry of Economic Affairs, who also provide continued support for the office. The aim is to help communities and companies get fast Internet connections and, above all, to make full use of the grants available.
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The Digital Skills Qualification Alliance supports manufacturing and production-related companies in individual planning and joint implementation of in-company courses to promote digital skills. The courses are supported by AMS OÖ and the commerce department of Upper Austria.
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DESI (Digital Economy and Society Index) is an index developed by the EU and surveyed annually at national level. It allows a comparison of the "digital performance" of the member states in five dimensions and a monitoring of the development over time.
For the first time, a regional DESI has been created for the province of Upper Austria to determine the status of digitization progress in Upper Austria compared to the rest of Austria and other EU countries.
Especially in the field of generative manufacturing/3D printing (additive manufacturing), mechatronics opens up completely new possibilities in connection with increasing digitalization. This technology supports the production of prototypes directly from CAD models, thus significantly reducing product development steps and development costs while increasing efficiency in development.
In addition to prototype construction, there are also requirements from the aerospace and automotive industries as well as from toolmaking, which are constantly providing new fields of application and research for the use of generative manufacturing - whether with 3D printing techniques for metals or with plastics. The aim is to make this innovative manufacturing process more widely available to Upper Austrian companies. Ultimately, however, new project ideas should also evolve with the assistance of Upper Austria's research facilities, both at the Johannes Kepler University and at the Upper Austrian University of Applied Sciences.
In cooperation with R&D facilities and other clusters, the Plastics Cluster is addressing a major challenge for its companies. In plastics processing, many different "recipes" for plastics are used, including the use of recycled materials in some cases. Since the properties of the substances used are constantly changing during production, and also during use, it is difficult to predict their "behaviour". Even complex simulations often do not produce reliable results.
Digitisation using predictive analytics offers great opportunities for being able to continue production flexibly and efficiently. This potential needs to be identified and used to derive project ideas for increasing production digitalisation in injection moulding / extrusion, contract manufacturing and tool making.