Leila Saari

I have been working at VTT since 1994. In the beginning my focus was in software development. I have developed software in several projects including real-time control system software for harvesters, AGVs (Autonomous Guided Vehicles) and surface treatment robots. These control systems were developed using heterogeneous operating systems (DOS, QNX, QP, Windows NT with INtime real-time extension or Linux with RT Linux) and C or C++. 

After few years I started as a project manager. The most global project has been Holonic Manufacturing Systems as we had also international overseas partners. Later my work was more management and planning of our research focus and future projects. System analysis and design were still included but less software design and hardly any software development. 

2003 I had the possibility to refresh my career as the Marketing manager of VTT Electronics being also a member of the board. In 2006 and I started as a Technology advisor (later Senior Specialist, Development) in R&D reporting and planning team. Tasks included support for strategy process and annual planning including facilitation of management team meetings, developing Balanced Score Card (BSC), defining and evaluating technological competences as well as organising and facilitating remote meetings.

I returned back to research late in 2014 to the research called Business, Innovations and Foresight. I have been working for the DIGILE research programme (Need for speed) and managing Pilot development workpackage in Cloud Collaborative Manufacturing networks (C2NET).  It was very interesting to be back in R&D&I again.

Starting from 2018 to June 2019 I led the Analytics plus ecosystem having almost 40 AI and data-analytics companies. Currently I am acting as the contact person for the web based AI maturity self-assessment tool, https://ai.digimaturity.vtt.fi/. In DigiLeap project the set of SME companies were supported and guided on their digitalisation process and the ApuaDigiin.fi support service was launched. In 2019 the maturity tool for manufacturing companies was developed, https://manumaturity.vtt.fi/. Currently my projects focus on the digitalisation of manufacturing companies, for example identifying sustainable digitalisation development paths for manufacturing SMEs and developing digital product passport (DPP) for manufacturing indystry and to boost implementation of new R-cycles..