With Electrolux setting ambitious targets to help consumers choose more sustainable products that improve their everyday life and the health of the planet, the second edition of the Open Innovation co-develop program included sustainability as a key theme.
Five hybrid teams including Electrolux experts and external innovators had to opportunity to accelerate innovation in this area, having access to Electrolux's deep engineering expertise, R&D resources and manufacturing network.
The five selected start-ups, spin-offs and SMEs have all reached the final milestone of the program, with one of the projects now in scale-up phase.
Our homes are turning smarter and smarter, so our fridges, being connected and equipped with new technologies such as cameras and artificial intelligence.
How might we combine big data and smart fridge:
1. to manage and optimize home power supply, leveraging services, new technologies and innovative business models?
2. to minimize food waste through an effortless inventory management system that complements computer vision?
Predictive maintenance has proven to be essential across various industries due to its benefits such as reducing risk of component damage, reducing machine downtime and improving customer satisfaction and trust.
Leveraging the data from connected appliances we want to determine the condition and the remaining useful life of components hence predicting the time-to-failure of the appliance itself.
Every year we produce tons of waste in office consumables, organic waste, metals, aluminum, plastics…while we are always committed to decrease the amount of waste produced, we are seeking innovative solutions, processes or services to sort, value and re-use waste or scrap material in our factories.
Microplastics are polluting our ocean shoreline worldwide. These particles can be intentionally part of a product (like cosmetics, paints etc.) or the result of plastic products degradation including car tires, plastic waste or synthetic fibers or textiles. These synthetic fibers and other fabric particles are released whenever we do our household laundry and they are too small to be retained of by the sewage treatment network.
Electrolux is seeking technologies and solutions to capture the release of microplastics ranging from filtration systems, to technologies to detect and purify wastewater from detergent, soil, fibers residuals.
Packaging is essential to prevent damages to the appliances we sell, particularly the big ones, but it is a one use only component.
We are willing to investigate and develop new packaging solutions that are highly sustainable and circular, also logistics-wise, with ideally minimal use of materials, innovative in design, recyclable and reusable; in a nutshell, able to turn packaging from a mere waste into a valuable resource.
There are noises that are perceived by consumers as annoying or, even worse, as signal of defects or malfunctioning. We are looking for reliable and scalable innovations to rapidly develop methodologies and test solutions for fast acoustic controls aimed to identify noise anomalies.
Our ultimate goal is to be able to control the consumer acoustic perceptions of our appliances directly in the production line.
Cooking appliances are today using traditional materials (like glass and steel) because of necessity to withstand with high temperature (<500°C). These materials require also to be easy to clean and scratch resistant. Glass and stainless steel shows their limits in this use.
We are looking for innovative coating or materials, high temperature and scratch resistant, to substitute them and open new horizons to products development.
We want to make sure that our appliances are working better and longer.
Therefore, we are looking for solutions to predict long term reliability of products and components and guarantee functioning also under stress conditions (i.e. appliance misuse, prolonged or intensive use by consumer) by means of new testing methodologies that can accelerate real consumer behaviors and/or detect weak signals that could potentially lead to usury or ageing of components.
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