"As producers call for defect-free aluminium flat-rolled products to meet rapidly growing global demand, ABB's innovative solutions for measuring flatness, thickness and tension hold the key to enhanced accuracy, reliability, and longevity. Our commitment to continuous development and refinement, including realizing the possibilities of digitalization, enhances real-time decision-making, reduces waste and energy consumption, and addresses the industry's skills gap,” Marko Sydänlammi, Global Product Line Manager Flatness Systems, ABB

Currently, Marko Sydänlammi serves as the Global Product Line Manager for Flatness systems at ABB Measurement & Analytics. In this pivotal role, he is entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring end-to-end profitable growth and development of the flatness systems offering over the entire life cycle. This includes portfolio management, footprint analysis, and the development of a business mix strategy for the products.

He has worked in product management, operations, engineering, and sales of measurement and control equipment for the battery, metals, paper, and converting industries for over 33 years.

Marko holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanics and Computer Science from Linköping University, Sweden.

AL Circle: The aluminium flat-rolled products industry requires precise quality control across multiple stages of production. What innovations have ABB introduced to enhance real-time quality inspection and ensure defect-free products, particularly in high-stress and high-speed environments?

Marko Sydanlammi: We have a long track record of working with metals producers and developing products to help them optimise the quality of their products. All of our instruments – for measurement of flatness, thickness, roll force and strip tension – feature measurement technologies pioneered by us that deliver unsurpassed accuracy, reliability and longevity compared to competing devices. As such, we can offer complete solutions that enable producers to achieve maximum product quality, time after time, with the longest operational lifetime and the lowest cost of ownership.

We are committed to developing and refining our product offering to ensure the needs of our customers are constantly being met. An example is our ABB flatness system, the Stressometer, which was first introduced in 1967. Now used in metal production applications worldwide, it has been steadily refined to offer enhanced performance of flatness control, particularly in aluminium applications. Read the full interview here.