Collaborative Robots (Cobots) play an increasing role in the advanced manufacturing landscape. The cobot market is rapidly expanding, and the academic literature is similarly growing. This paper presents a short overview of current cobotic trends and futures frontiers of the cobot development with particular emphasis on the role of cobots within the Industry 4.0-paradigm and within global megatrends. Since there is a strange, but distinct lack of literature reviews on the topic of collaborative robotics, the paper provides novel and valuable insights. In highlighting current frontiers, the paper also illustrates potential developments of future human-robot interaction.

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The central promise of DT-technology is to use and iterate the available real-time process information in a simulation setting transforming it instantly to operational or managerial-level decision-making implications. Despite the clear potential of this emerging technology, a gap of knowledge exists on how such DT could be implemented and what would be its defining features. The key contribution of this research is to lay out the central discrepancies between the promise of digital twin technology vision versus what is possible within the limits of current industrial infrastructure in the short-and mid-term. This research builds on the currently existing scientific literature which we use to point out ten foundational issues of system-level digital twins that are analyzed and discussed in detail. As a conclusion, we propose that large system-level DT-projects have a managerial rationale only when several preliminary conditions are met and fulfilled.

After decades of globalization and outsourcing the idea of “bringing manufacturing back home” and the twin concepts of backshoring and nearshoring have received much attention in recent years. Recent positive stories from the Finnish manufacturing industry suggests Finland as an attractive target for nearshoring, yet little to none has hitherto been made of this connection. This article (i.) examines recent relocation literature with a focus on nearshoring and manufacturing in high-cost environments, (ii.) explores the location advantage of Finland, (iii.) analyses cases of recent manufacturing developments in Finland within this context as single incidents or signals of change, and (iv.) discusses this development within the perspective of Industry 4.0.