In October, Estonian capital Tallinn had the honour of hosting a prestigious global business event – Go Global Awards, organised by Enterprise Estonia and International Trade Council.
The Go Global Awards celebrate companies that are driving the economy forward with their innovations, technologies, and strategies. The programme aims to build a community of manufacturers, exporters, investors, and related service providers to support one another, share ideas, create partnerships and build on their existing knowledge and connections.
This year’s ceremony and the preceding conference program took place in Tallinn as Enterprise Estonia was awarded the Best Trade Promotion Agency title last year. It was the first time this top business event with more than 30 years of history took place in a Nordic country. The 3-day programme included a 2-day conference, networking events, site visits to Estonian companies, the award ceremony and involved 400+ attendees from 80+ countries. The event was opened by the President of Estonia Mr. Alar Karis.
Part of the conference programme was a panel discussion titled “Key Trends in the Manufacturing Sector” hosted by Michael Solomon with seven panellists – Olga Trofymova, Greg Grace, Pekka Ketola, Justinas Liuima, Oleksii Shcherbatenko, Krzysztof Jakubczak and our own Kodasema CEO Birgit Linnamäe. This panel looked at the most important emerging market trends and business drivers for the manufacturing industry, exploring how new manufacturing technologies, product sourcing, supply chains, and workforce might affect the industry in the coming years, how companies are adapting to tackle these drivers now, and how to stay prepared in order to stay relevant. The insights from the participants considered essential challenges of today’s production sector, supply chain diversification, legal aspects, war in Ukraine, and education.
Here’s what Kodasema’s message at the GoGlobal Awards focussed on: “In the construction sector, efficiency has hardly increased since the 1950s, and people still make the mistake of thinking about construction the same way we did back then. People don’t also realise what a massive industry construction is in terms of global CO2 output. So shifting manufacturing from the old-style on-site construction to factory-produced houses, and adding standardised, digitised, robotised processes has the potential of a major shift. Using house modules assembled into bigger clusters, adding whole pocket neighbourhoods, communities for young families, or the elderly becomes possible at reduced time and cost.. That is efficiency. A lot of standardisation is possible through digitisation of drawings, but also standardising the separate elements of construction and assembling the elements. It’s a huge opportunity.
At Kodasema, we are also trying to use more localised labour. Shipping makes prefab and modular houses expensive, but taking another technology-led leap, robotised small factories can move nearer to the markets. What is being exported is actually the intelligent part, the intellectual property, the engineering, the building physics, the architecture, the design, but what is used locally for example in Ukraine, or we at Kodasema produce in the US – local materials, local labour, local production technologies, as we keep and export the design and architecture.”
The International Trade Council (ITC) is a consortium of chambers of commerce, industry associations, corporations, entrepreneurs and Investors working collectively together to resolve technical barriers to trade. The Council’s direct reach includes 176 countries and 40 million organisations worldwide. It is operated as a collective network of local chapters in 17 countries.
Estonian Business and Innovation Agency is a government agency whose further aim is to facilitate the process of Estonia becoming one of the most competitive countries in the world. The goals include supporting entrepreneurship and the improvement of living conditions in Estonia, increasing the country’s international competitiveness, visibility and attractiveness as a place for business, living and studies.
Read more about Estonia’s success story as well as the event and winners ->>>
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