The project in brief
DRIVE PR – Data-Driven Product Realisation is a three-year collaboration between Swedish manufacturers, technology providers and research organisations, funded by Vinnova and led from Chalmers. This page answers the questions we are asked most often.
What problem does DRIVE PR solve?
Manufacturers are asked to deliver new, sustainable products faster than before, often built on materials, processes and technologies with little history behind them. That means more uncertainty in every decision. Today most companies handle it with margins, safety factors and experience, and pay for it in over-dimensioned products, scrap and rework, late design changes, extra testing and delayed launches.
DRIVE PR sets out to replace guesswork with data where it matters most: in the early decisions of product realisation, where design freedom is high and about 80 per cent of a product's life-cycle behaviour is fixed. The technology to do so largely exists. Wireless connectivity, high-performance computing, AI and digital twins have advanced rapidly. What is missing is the systematic connection between that infrastructure and everyday engineering and production practice.
What is the goal?
Reduce the cost arising from uncertainty, variation and risk by 50 per cent compared with a 2026 baseline.
Demonstrated for first applications by 2029, and shown to hold in general and at scale after Phase 2 in 2032
The cost of uncertainty, variation and risk is what companies spend because they do not know enough at decision time: margins and over-dimensioning, scrap and rework, late changes, extra testing, slow ramp-up and stoppages. Each research track sets a 2026 baseline for its industrial case and defines measurable criteria against it. Impact is assessed qualitatively in the industrial applications and quantitatively in controlled laboratory studies.
Behind the number is a vision agreed by about 50 people from industry and academia in 2025: Swedish manufacturing shall excel in transforming innovation into sustainable and resilient products through effective use of advanced digital infrastructure across the entire value chain.
What does data-driven mean here?
Most companies already use data to inform decisions. DRIVE PR wants data to drive them, in an integrated way, from design through production to use.
Today: data-enabled
Data informs decisions
- Simulation, test and field data sit in separate systems and are consulted when someone asks
- Uncertainty and variation are handled qualitatively, with margins and safety factors
- Feedback from production and use reaches engineering late, if at all
DRIVE PR: data-driven
Data drives decisions
- Sensed, tested, simulated and historical data are integrated into the models and tools engineers use every day
- Uncertainty and variation are measured, traced and managed with hybrid physics-based and AI models
- Factory and field data flow back to engineering, and engineering intent flows forward to production
How is the work organised?
The research is grouped in three impact areas, one each for the design office, decision support, and the factory, with twelve tracks in total. Each track starts from a question posed by one or more partner companies, sets a baseline, and runs studies and demonstrations together with researchers. A common track pulls the results into one Data-Driven Product Realisation Concept.
Two streams run in parallel. One develops and demonstrates methods and tools that are mature enough to show measurable impact by 2029. The other explores emerging digital infrastructure at lower maturity, to reduce the risk of adopting it and to prepare the next phase. A Learning Lab turns the results into training, events and shared resources, and a scale-up stream prepares roadmaps, standardisation and commercial paths so that the results outlast the project.
What will be delivered, and when?
- Kick-off at Chalmers and AstaZero. Tracks, baselines and reference cases defined during the autumn.
- First-year conference. First capabilities demonstrated in the test environments. Online training launched.
- Second-year conference. Industrial cases tested with DRIVE PR capabilities. Roadmap for scaling published.
- Final Phase 1 conference. Evidence and impact assessment, the documented concept, and recommendations for Phase 2.
By the end of Phase 1
- A documented Data-Driven Product Realisation Concept, integrating the project's results with state-of-the-art digital solutions.
- A demonstration and learning environment that serves as a test bed for data-driven product realisation.
- Industrial, case-driven demonstrations that validate a pilot of the concept against the 2026 baseline, with key technologies matured from technology readiness level 3–5 to 4–6.
- A roadmap for upscaling, standardisation and commercialisation.
People and exchange
- Six to eight PhD students at licentiate level and two to three completed postdoctoral periods.
- About 30 master's theses carried out with industry.
- At least two visiting professors and five exchange periods with leading centres abroad.
- In Phase 2: a further 6–8 licentiates, 30 more theses, and at least 200 industrial participants trained in the project's tools and methods.
Who is behind it?
DRIVE PR is led from Chalmers University of Technology by senior members of the Wingquist Laboratory, which for 25 years has developed the virtual and digital product realisation methods that Swedish industry uses today. Ola Isaksson, Professor of Product Development, is project leader. The Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Fraunhofer-Chalmers Centre all take part.
The project grew out of a feasibility study in 2025, led by Chalmers with Volvo Construction Equipment, GKN Aerospace and Saab, in which about 100 people from more than 30 organisations defined the industrial need, the vision and the goal. Fourteen organisations then formed the consortium: three system manufacturers, three subsystem and component suppliers, five digital solution providers and three research organisations.
All partners sit on the Project Board, which elects a Steering Group and carries the consortium contract. The project leader and the six work package leaders meet monthly. An international advisory group reviews the project once a year.
| Work package | Led by |
|---|---|
| 1 Industrial needs and impact | Sophie I. Hallstedt, Chalmers |
| 2 Methods and tools for demonstration | Kristina Wärmefjord, Chalmers |
| 3 Novel applications of digital infrastructure | Knut Åkesson, Chalmers |
| 4 Learning Lab | Andreas Dagman, Chalmers |
| 5 Implementation and scale-up | Richard Lindqvist, Saab |
| 6 Project management and dissemination | Ola Isaksson, Chalmers |
- Funded by
- Vinnova, Advanced Digitalisation programme, SEK 53 million. Partners co-finance with their own resources.
- Period
- 1 June 2026 – 31 May 2029 (Phase 1)
- Coordinator
- Chalmers University of Technology
- At Vinnova
- Project page
Designed in, not added on
The industrial cases are chosen for their sustainability impact, such as repair and remanufacturing processes that keep material in use, and the project addresses the energy and resource footprint of digitalisation itself by favouring context-specific, resource-efficient digital solutions. The project targets a gender distribution of at least 40/60 among its PhD, postdoctoral and master's students, and applies human-in-the-loop decision processes and critical reflection on data and model assumptions to counter bias as AI-based decision support is introduced.