Sandvik focuses on co-creation to find seeds for success
Rockathon, a co-creation and open innovation event, was arranged by Sandvik in cooperation with EIT RawMaterials consortium, which is initiated by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) and funded by the European Commission, on September 5 in Tampere, Finland. During Rockathon, technology and software development companies, as well as subject-matter experts, collaborated intensively on an onboard analysis project.
The challenge was to create and design a workable and compatible system for onboard ore analysis for mining equipment. A collaboration agreement with Sandvik was awarded to the winning team.
Rockathon participants were asked to contribute via brainstorming, ideation exercises and co-creation design thinking to real-time and onboard analyzing system for moving mining machines. The analyzing system should “see” inside the rock utilizing mining equipment with a new intelligent rock mass analyser. It should also measure ore grade to define ore boundaries and avoid mining and processing of waste material.
Co-creation, crowdsourcing, open innovation
Cooperation and collaboration with customers and other stakeholders isn’t only about technology. It’s about the right attitude and mentality shift, allowing experts to contribute and co-create to research and development projects.
We are always trying to figure out how to enable customers to be more productive and effective without compromising safety
“Rockathon increases our innovation capacity. We are tapping into the creative and intellectual skill sets of people and companies outside our organization. This is also increasing innovation velocity; we can go from need identification to reviewing innovative ideas and concept quickly. Teams and companies contributing to the challenge are pre-screened to make sure that they are familiar with the challenge, so we can expect good results,” explains Jani Vilenius, PhD, Director of Research and Technology Development at Sandvik, and continues:
“This would potentially accelerate time to market with new products and services. Co-creation’s feedback process weeds out misfit ideas quickly so that only the most promising ideas make it to the next steps. This iterative filtering works more quickly than it normally takes during new product development. EIT RawMaterials' contribution in arranging this event and using their networks to scan partners has been very valuable for us."
“We are always trying to figure out how to enable customers to be more productive and effective without compromising safety. The Rockathon challenge is a good continuation for our research work. At the end of the Rockathon, we set out concrete next steps with the winner of this challenge to follow up the discussions, agreements and further development of the prototypes. Participants are given comprehensive feedback in the form of reports and recommendations,” says Sirpa Launis, Research Manager.
Sandvik Rockathon challenge champs were crowned Spectral Industries with their cross-disciplinary idea of onboard analysis.
“They really embraced co-creation and were able to present a workable solution for our specific challenge. We will continue to work together to develop a prototype, and to find solutions to drive continuous improvement in the area of onboard analysis,” concludes Sirpa Launis.