Innovation, research and software: special "lesson" from Scm Group at the Università Politecnica delle Marche

What does it mean for a global leading industrial group to create innovation? How do technologies change in the 4.0 era and why have digital software and services become so important in the manufacturing sector? These were the points at the centre of the talk given by Federico Ratti, Scm Group's Innovation Director, on 4 December at the Università Politecnica delle Marche, hosted by Prof. Fabrizio Marinelli, professor at the Department of IT Engineering. Marinelli points out that "the initiative falls within the Università Politecnica's more general objectives aimed at promoting technological innovation through a more intense synergy between the business-manufacturing system and the University".

Scm Group currently have a number of on-going collaborations with Prof. Marinelli and Marches University Campus, not only for joint training initiatives but also for extremely interesting research and development projects. This is the case with certain optimisation algorithms which have subsequently been combined with SCM technologies for different processes linked to timber manufacturing, from sanding to drilling and some of these, like the software for the SCM Maestro Ottimo Cut beam saws machines, have also received notable recognition from the world of industrial research.

The importance of equipping machinery and industrial plants with applications like these, has been one of the topics covered by Ratti with future engineers at the University of Ancona on the Operations Research 2 Course of the Master's Degree in IT Engineering and Automation. Nowadays, innovation mainly translates into the development of software which not only makes machinery faster, more exact and better performing, but simplifies the operator's work as much as possible, guaranteeing a constant high level of know-how. Optimisation software, as well as operator interface and user experience design systems like Scm Group's new HMI Maestro Active, recent recipient of the prestigious RedDot Award. Services and products which need to continually evolve and for which joint research work between the world of business and universities has become increasingly more fundamental.