Along with Society 5.0 and the SDGs activities, the realization of a sustainable society will be a goal at the global level in the future. A new systems approach based on the symbiosis of humans, machines, and nature will play an important role in achieving this goal. In this forum, we would like to discuss what kind of systems approach is needed to realize a sustainable society in the future through a panel discussion among researchers and practitioners from Japan and abroad.

This forum consists of 6 short talks by following speakers and panel discussion:

10:00-10:10  Prof. Fabio Sgarbossa
Title : Resilient and viable value networks based on reliable early warning systems, data-driven recovery planning, and smart technologies for adaptive manufacturing as a service (MaaS) solutions

10:10-10:20  Prof. Hajime Kita
Title: Systems thinking and social simulation for co-creation of a sustainable society

10:20-10:30  Dr. Yoichi Nonaka
Title: Japan-Germany Co-creative PJ "Multiverse Barrier Free“ for Sustainable Society

10:30-10:40  Prof. József Vancza
Title: Cyber-physical systems for sustainable and competitive production

10:40-10:50  Prof. Tatsushi Nishi
Title: Stream of Research Committee on Flexible Automation in Japan

10:50-11:00  Dr. Kiyoshi Maekawa
Title: e-F@ctory and Teachingless Robot System Technology
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11:00-12:00 Panel discussion (Moderator: Prof. Toshiya Kaihara) 

Fabio Sgarbossa is Full Professor of Industrial Logistics, leader of the Production Management and Logistics Group at Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He is also responsible of the Logistics 4.0 Lab the Norway’s first logistics laboratory that merges digital technologies with traditional Production and Logistics systems, enabling researchers, practitioners, engineers, pioneers, students, and other enthusiasts to come together and collaborate on common ground. His research projects focus on traditional topics as design and management of industrial logistics systems, technological innovation, material handling and warehousing, but also new advanced one, as industry 4.0 and 5.0, human centric design, additive manufacturing in operations and supply chain management, hydrogen supply chain. He has published over 150 publications in relevant international journals, and he is acting as editor, guest editor and member of editorial boards for several journals, among them Associate Editor for International Journal of Production Research and Area Editor for Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal. From July 2023, he is chair of IFAC TC 5.2 Management and Control in Manufacturing and Logistics.

Hajime Kita received his B.E., M.E., and D. E. degrees all from Kyoto University. From 1987 to 1997, he was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University. From 1997 to 2000, he was an Associate Professor at Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 2000 to 2003, he was a Professor at National Institution for Academic Degrees and University Evaluation. From 2003 to 2013, he was a Professor at Academic Center for Computing and Media Study, Kyoto University. Since 2013, he has been a Professor at Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences (ILAS), Kyoto University. His research major is System Science and Engineering. His research interests are social simulation and general education of informatics in universities including education in computer programming.

Yoichi Nonaka joined the Production Engineering Research Laboratory of Hitachi, Ltd. in 1992, working in R&D for industrial robot application systems, digital engineering technology, and production control technology. He was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, the director of the Manufacturing Systems Division of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineering in 2017. He is an international expert and Japan representative to convening ISO/IEC international standardization activities since 2014, member of the Japan-Germany IoT collaboration among Robot Revolution & Industrial IoT Initiative (RRI) and Platform Industrie4.0 since 2015, and a collaborative professor at the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University since 2018. At the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) in 2019, he promoted a Japanese-German industry-academia expert discussion on the new relationship between humans and machines in a digital society, and published it as a discussion paper from acatech.

József Váncza graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 1984 and received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 1994. Since his graduation, he has been working at the then Hungarian Academy of Sciences, now ELKH Research Institute for Computer Science and Automation (SZTAKI), where he is Head of the Research Laboratory for Engineering and Business Intelligence. His research interests include engineering applications of artificial intelligence, production informatics, cyber-physical manufacturing systems, human-robot collaboration, cooperative and sustainable production in networks. He was awarded among others with the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, Knight Cross (2008) and the Dennis Gábor Prize for Innovation (2021).He has been involved in university education for three decades, teaching at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is Fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineeing (CIRP), where he has been Chair of the Production Systems and Organisations Committee (2016-2019) and is now Vice-chair of the Editorial Committee and member of the Council. He is also member of the International Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET), associate editor of the CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology and the Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing journals. He has served various IFAC Technical Committees for three decades.  He published 220+ publications and registered 7 patents. His works received over 5400 citations (Google Scholar). 

List of publications: 
https://m2.mtmt.hu/gui2/?type=authors&mode=browse&sel=10002061
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eA5Mk-MAAAAJ&hl=en

Tatsushi Nishi received the Ph.D. degree in Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2001. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Okayama University. From 2006 to 2020, he was an Associate Professor with Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University. From 2020, he has been a Full Professor with the Department of Mechanical Systems and Engineering, Okayama University. His research interests include discrete optimization, discrete event systems, scheduling, distributed optimization, supply chain management, robotics, and manufacturing systems. He is a member of IEEE, INFORMS, and IFAC TC5.2. From 2021, he has been a Chief of the Research Subcommittee on Cyber Physical Flexible Automation with the Institute of Systems, Control, and Information Engineers, Japan. He also serves as senior editor of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.

Kiyoshi Maekawa joined Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in 1991. He engaged in research and development of motion control technology for industrial robots and FA systems. In 2008, he became the motion control group manager of the Mechatronics Department at the Advanced Technology R&D Center, and is currently the Chief Researcher of the Robotics Department at the Advanced Technology R&D Center. He is a member of the Robotics Society of Japan and the Institute of Systems, Control and Information Engineers. He is also a secretary of robot innovation working group in Robot Revolution & Industrial IoT Initiative.

Toshiya Kaihara is a Professor of Graduate School of System Informatics, and a Director of Value Creation Smart Production Research Centre at Kobe University. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees from Kyoto University, and his Ph.D. degree from Imperial College London. He is an author of 250+ publications of journal papers and books. His research interests include theory of systems optimisation and simulation, and its application into production, logistics, and social systems. He is Fellow of JSME (The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers), IEEJ (The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan) and CIRP (The International Academy of Production Engineering), and a member of IFAC (TC 5.2), IFIP, IEEE, ASME, SICE, ISCIE, and many others. He is also an editor of Journal of Advanced Mechanical Design, Systems, and Manufacturing, Production planning and control.