well as product and service innovation . Yli-Pietilä believes in a proactive approach and outlines several key areas his organisation is focusing on at the moment . “ The focus is on operational efficiency and safety ,” he explains . “ We focus on product quality , equipment availability , performance and safety and they are our key areas in terms of digitalisation . We identify problems in our operations that can ’ t be solved through traditional methodologies or we see that digitalisation provides the best option to improve things .”

With COVID-19 disrupting industries across the world , Yli-Pietilä outlines the impact the pandemic has had on Stora Enso , however stresses that his organisation was fortunate to already have the digital infrastructure in place . “ It ’ s had an impact on our interaction with external partners in the sense that we ’ re now very careful with letting

EXECUTIVE PROFILE :

43 Title : Head of Smart Operations Industry : Paper & Forest Products

Company : Stora Enso Location : Finland

Marko Yli-Pietilä is an experienced Digital Transformation professional . Today , he is Head of Smart Operations in Stora Enso , which means digitalising operations to improve operational efficiency . Prior to joining Stora Enso , Marko has held international positions for example in Nokia and Teradata , which are leaders in their respective industries of Telecommunications and Advanced Analytics . He has also worked with renewable materials companies and their digitalisation related development programs for years as a Consultant . Marko holds a Licentiate of Technology post-graduate degree and he is also a certified vocational teacher . manufacturingglobal . com