Interview with Jesús de la Maza, President of Innovalia Group.

What are the objectives of the new Strategic Business Unit called Innovalia Digital?
Innovalia Digital was born naturally, taking advantage of the synergies and know-how on digitization and ICT systems of the Innovalia Group and betting on going to the market together. This new and strategic unit within the Group is formed by the companies SQS, CBT, Redborder and Kumo Technologies with the support of CARSA and the Innovalia Association. Companies that have been a clear example of transformation in their own sector and now decide to unite to maximize their potential and reach out to the companies of the Basque Country to embark on their path towards digital transformation.

Within the manufacturing sector, what represents the processes of digitalization in companies?
Digitization is a way of innovation, of producing changes to be updated in the future. The change of the Basque Industry was made years ago by own survival, because it was necessary to change the way of producing so that the industry will not be outdated, it was in a natural and progressive way that led us to produce in a more optimized way and to give it Value to the know-how of each company, and although today the industry is better off, it is necessary to bet on modernizing the sector in order to compete in the world.
And if we talk about what digitization means in the manufacturing sector, for example, from our “zero-defects” manufacturing laboratory considered as Digital Innovation Hub by the European Commission, experiments are carried out around quality control with different companies. This allows us to develop certain technology application protocols for the digitalization of the process and establish methods of innovation in different points of industrial production. Thanks to our laboratory, SMEs in the environment can benefit from technology, experience and innovative solutions that have already worked in other companies.

Bilbao will become the world capital of metrology next year. In this sense, could advance some headlines of Metromeet 2019? and what can you do about the 2018 meeting?
In 2018 we managed to concentrate the main managers of companies with great international projection such as General Electric, Autodesk, QISAB, Capvidia, Novo Nordisk and Carlsberg, among others, in addition to the main institutions worldwide such as the PTB, the University of Nottingham, the University of Antwerp, Tekniker, the Technische Universität München and the legal organization of Metrology of India and with the own contribution of Innovalia Metrology. We have innovative content with great interest. We discovered and discussed the importance of metrology on the way to Industry 4.0 and discussed crucial issues in the sector such as standards, manufacturing ecosystems or complete automation of measurement systems.
In 2019 and due to the 15th anniversary of the Conference, the organization is preparing many surprises that will take place on April 10, 11 and 12, 2019 at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao. We have just published the Metromeet 2019 program and we are very keen to respond to the great interest that this edition is causing. As always, it will be sponsored by Innovalia, Renishaw, Faro, Zeiss, and Creaform and with the best speakers to offer attendees the best and newest content. Metromeet is a unique conference in that sense, we get together year after year to dreamers and innovators industry professionals who agree with us to go further and thanks to that we have created a community in Metromeet that navigates united towards Intelligent Metrology and Automated Manufacturing. Registration is open on the Metromeet website, so we invite interested parties to register and reserve their ticket.

At what stage is the implementation of advanced manufacturing systems in the Basque Country?
The Industrial sector is facing many changes that pose clear challenges for the Industry itself. Innovation is a way to progress and a business strategy that should be embedded in every company that wants to evolve towards advanced manufacturing.
In many cases, innovation is seen as a problem and not as the only way to success. That decision is the one that will determine and determine the success or stagnation of many companies in the sector. Today we have the means or resources to make the systems that allow us to move towards the well-known “Intelligent Manufacturing” a reality.
In metrology, for example, without a firm commitment to incorporate the latest technologies to be able to add value to the production process, these companies would have disappeared; and we have understood this from Innovalia Metrology, from where we bet clearly to provide online measurement solutions and decision support based on advanced quality control parameters, big data analysis techniques, and advanced computing solutions.

Within the world of Innovation, What trends do you expect to be installed to improve business management?
For the Innovalia Group, innovation has always been part of our business strategy. There are companies that invest in innovation but the creation of the Innovalia Group and all the synergies that exist between the different companies in the group are precisely the result of innovation and the continuous need that exists in the Group to create technology, internationalize and follow the path towards Industry 4.0.
The key is to bet and take that step forward and decide to innovate, to be part of the change and not just to be dragged when there is no other choice. This is a business attitude that ends up involving the reception of new technologies, the digitalization of processes and, above all, the management of data.