Netherlands Innovation Network – Tokyo News

Posted by Rob Stroeks

One of the ideas raised during the bilateral Expert Meeting Webinar “Smart Industry for a Resilient Future” on the 19^th of August, is to create a NL-JP bilateral Taskforce Smart Industry. By collaborating, both countries want to tackle the increasing challenges their industries face to maintain business models that are autonomous and sustainable and have secure supply chains. This is important to stay competitive and anticipate future needs within the different ongoing transitions like digitalization, geopolitical transitions, the energy transition and greying society. The two nations are home to advanced manufacturers in many fields, including electronics, vehicles and mechatronics.

We can look back to a successful discussion with some 60 professionals from both countries, where the participants and speakers found common ground in their wish to have a taskforce to kickstart actions, like expert dialogues and topical deep-dive sessions, that lead to a long term action plan and a roadmap for further collaboration. The focus is on implementation and share experiences in various aspects of Smart Industry.

The Expert Meeting, organized by the Netherlands Embassy in Tokyo, focused on (additive) manufacturing technologies and improved supply chains (incl digital twins), and featured three presentations:

• Koji Yasui of Mitsubishi Electric Corp and Advisor to the Government SIP Program on Manufacturing Technologies, explained Japanese enabling technologies for digital infrastructure (like smart grids), semiconductors (single nm chips) and leaping technology (quantum effects) and the countries government Roadmap to interconnect physical and cyber spaces. He exemplified recent joint activities with the Netherlands in the field of quantum and photonics, and links between Netherlands Field Labs and Japanese industrial hubs.
• Peter van Harten, Ambassador Smart Industry of the Netherlands, explained how the countries aims to boost smartness in the ever more complex industrial sectors, by finding new combinations between software and hardware, between different sectors. As example he mentioned the use of data and IoT to better predict incidents and boost efficiency in the countries’ chemical sector.
• Rene Backx of NX3D gave a fine example of existing bilateral NL-JP collaboration. Dutch industrial 3D-printing firm NX3D collaborates with Japanese building company Takenaka to create innovative build designs that are flexible in production and strong in performance. NX3D just printed a metal bridge in Amsterdam that is now open to public.

After the Panel Discussion an interactive Poll was conducted, giving pointers for follow-up activities.

The event was a follow-up of the Dutch Digital Mission to Japan of February 2021 headed by Mona Keijzer, State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

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