MDH Living Lab@IPR

MDH Living Lab@IPR focuses on users in the entire realization chain of a product or service, from idea to market. These include managers, employees, and consumers or clients. We also extensively collaborate with managers and employees in public sector organizations, such as museums, municipalities, regional authorities and hospitals.

The co-creation of knowledge with users occurs in undergraduate, post-graduate and post-doctoral research and education activities. IPR’s research environment embraces a philosophy that acknowledges the need for continuous strengthening of managing practices, across the realization chain, and continuous adaptation of businesses in coexistence with the surrounding society. This tightly aligns with fundamental principles of MDH, manifested by its close cooperation with companies and organizations in the region. The main activities in our Living Lab projects include Exploration, Experimentation, and Evaluation (with users in all phases).

We perform these activities in a “spiral and iterative” rather than sequential way. MDH Living Lab@IPR focuses on the manufacturing domain to strengthen and accelerate innovation and design processes and activities of small and medium enterprises, large companies and public organizations. The researchers and teachers involved in the Living Lab are working in global development and operational settings with a broad understanding of sustainability.

Thus, MDH Living Lab@IPR provides crucial interfaces with collaborative platforms outside MDH. We are convinced that by conducting research in collaboration with users within companies and organizations we can unleash their creative and innovative capabilities, thereby helping efforts to foster their sustainable development.

Many of our academic staff have years of working experience in industrial or public sectors. This greatly facilitates collaboration with diverse organizations, and the cross-disciplinary work at the heart of our daily research and education activities.

MDH Living Lab@IPR is tightly integrated in IPR’s educational and research framework (at undergraduate, doctoral and post-doctoral levels). We have good infrastructure, partly provided by close collaboration and several strategic (university level) agreements with companies such as ABB Sweden, Bombardier Transportation, Volvo Group and Mälardalen Industrial Technology Center’s partner companies. We also receive support from Automation Region and Robotdalen. Moreover, we have agreements with local municipalities and extensively collaborate with museums and various kinds of local and national authorities.

The physical environment of IPR includes: a Fab Lab (with Material, Prototype, 3D, Metal and Wood Workshops); the Mälardalen User Experience Place with tools for online collaboration, an observation room with recording equipment and eye-tracking equipment; and the InnovationGym, an open space that facilitates creative workshops; plus a Studio and Manufacturing Innovation infrastructure co-funded by Volvo Group.

In the MDH Living Lab @IPR context a card game has been developed, based on the Knowledge Triangle. The aim of the game is to increase the players’ knowledge of the meaning, and practices, of co-creation. Players may include researchers, students, and employees of both private companies and public sector organizations.

[Show all publications]

Design for green lean building module production - Case study (Jul 2018)
Martin Kurdve, Jutta Hildenbrand , Christina Jönsson
Swedish Production Symposium 2018 (SPS 2018)

Development of the urban and industrial symbiosis in western Mälardalen (Jul 2018)
Martin Kurdve, Christina Jönsson , Ann-Sofie Granzell
Procedia CIRP IPS2 2018 (CIRP IPS2)

Digital assembly instruction system design with green lean perspective-Case study from building module industry (Jun 2018)
Martin Kurdve
Smart Manufacturing (CIRP CMS)

Already there? Cultivating emergent places for radical innovation in operations (Jun 2017)
Jennie Andersson Schaeffer
International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, Innovative Quality Improvement in Operations - Introducing Emergent Quality Management (IQIO)

Yvonne Eriksson, Professor

Email: yvonne.eriksson@mdh.se
Room:
Phone: +46 (0)16 163699