The industry in Agder comprises a few world-leading companies and many SMEs who are suppliers and independent manufacturers of goods and commodities.
Trends in manufacturing industry go towards flexible production of small series or even production of individually produced units.
This development is challenging to production equipment, usually developed for standardized production of large series.
Automation for flexible production requires the development of more intelligent robots, including vision, flexible management systems, collaborative control of cooperating units, failure monitoring, and correction systems.