Interviews with the Industrial Council
Phase 1 of Mistra Digital Forest includes years 2019-2023, while Phase 2 covers years 2023-2027.
Göran Ericsson, SLU
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– From SLU's perspective, we take with us the strength of the concrete cooperation between all the different organisations. This will be realised in the form of applications for the forestry arena, especially in Mistra Digital Forest, which builds a lot on our research results and on our environmental monitoring data.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– We continue to look forward to contributing world-leading research and ongoing environmental analysis on forests, forestry, ecology, economics and digitalisation.
Göran Ericsson
Magnus Petersson, Södra
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– The most important thing we take away is that research initiatives that so clearly include the forest industry, and have such concrete projects, also contribute to our development. Södra has also involved more people from different parts of our organisation to implement the projects, ranging from the industrial sector, the forestry sectors and the Innovation business area. This has contributed to greater participation and made us better recipients of the research results.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– Several interesting studies have been initiated, but four years is a short time for the development of new areas and methods that it is ultimately possible to implement. However, the potential has been demonstrated in several subprojects, which means that we are looking forward to the continued development of research that has already begun. Continuity and a long-term approach are important in achieving results that are useful in the forestry industry. A project period of eight years provides greater opportunities for achieving interesting results that we can benefit from.
Magnus Petersson
Fredrik Klang, Sveaskog
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– The luxury of working closely with prominent research groups, and good opportunities for deepening cooperation within each work package. Great opportunities to gather new knowledge and new solutions for application and progress in our own company.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– Continued exchange between companies and research providers via the Industrial Council and the work packages. Increased focus on applications and user-friendly solutions for partial automation, and analysis/map visualisation of large amounts of data.
Fredrik Klang
Charlotte Bengtsson, Skogforsk
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– All the research results that have been produced. The breadth of more basic steps and what has already been implemented during the programme period is impressive. We have some of these good cases in Phase 1, such as various decision support tools for harvesting and positioning trees. It is easy for researchers and research organisations to work in their own isolated silos. Collaboration has progressively become better and better. Mistra Digital Forest has a particularly important task in facilitating various collaborations. This way of working suits us very well at Skogforsk!
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– Continued committed and creative collaboration within the programme. I am thinking especially of the areas that are to some extent new in phase 2, road issues and the inclusion of nature and diversity aspects, in various digital ways. The last one will make nature conservation more transparent and make it easier to take the right action in the right place, that is, to work more precisely. I also hope that the companies' great commitment to research and digital development will continue, so that even more projects are continuously generated through the programme.
Charlotte Bengtsson
Göran Andersson, Billerud
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– Billerud has gained a lot from the programme thanks to effective collaboration with research providers and other companies. We have benefited greatly from the results, as we have also received new laser data to apply the research advances. All in all, we can say that the programme has played an important role in accelerating our digital development, with the help of the national collaboration that has taken place.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– Since many development projects are in the final phase during phase 1, in phase 2 we are looking forward to even more deliveries from the programme that we can use in our organisation. We also have high hopes that new effective applications will emerge, that we have not yet managed to figure out. During phase 2, we look forward to collaborating with research providers in many exciting and developing projects.
Göran Andersson
Johan Haglöf, Stora Enso
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– A great deal. Many of the questions and challenges we face can be answered in whole or in part by the results and deliverables produced during phase 1. Our need for sound digital solutions is great. I can also note that thanks to Mistra Digital Forest, as a company we are using research results as part of our development work in a new way, in that more people in our organisation have been involved. This has created broad commitment and made implementations easier.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– I think phase 2 will be even more successful. With a keen and experienced organisation, both within the programme and among the companies, together we will be able to deliver more as well as better results. In addition to the results, phase 1 created a lot of curiosity and expectations about the exciting issues to be investigated in phase 2. We are ready and willing to contribute.
Johan Haglöf
Jan Åhlund, Holmen
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– The programme has given us a lot of know-how and important insights into how digitalisation can increase both quality and efficiency in forestry. Early on, under the guidance of Umeå University, we chose to develop the digital transformation skills of Holmen Forest's management team. The knowledge and insights this provided have been crucial for the company's continued investments in digitalisation. Among other things, with our own competences we have developed tools that detect spruce bark beetle-damaged forest, and other tools that discover cultural and ancient remains in the forest.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– It is positive that there are plans for expanding knowledge in areas that were not covered in phase 1. One such area is roads, where we see great potential in maintenance work with good digital information that is continuously collected. Digital tract planning is another important focus area. We believe that a significant part of the tract planning in the future will be able to be done in the office, whilst maintaining quality. However, this means that we have to know what data we need to collect, and that we can then interpret it in the right way. Here, we are hoping for good support through new findings in the programme.
Jan Åhlund
Magnus Bergman, SCA
What is the most important thing you (you and your company) take away from Phase 1?
– That the programme has been successful and provided a close, solid link between companies and research. We see that we have been able to take advantage of new findings more quickly and implement them in our operations.
What are you looking forward to in Phase 2?
– I believe that we will achieve even faster development now that we have established close cooperation. A continuation of the research that has begun, especially in remote sensing, and precision forestry, and that we will make even more progress in the development of partial automation, which is the first step towards autonomous vehicles.
Magnus Bergman