Egbert-Jan Sol

CTO TNO Industry

Egbert-Jan Sol (1956) is CTO at TNO Industry, 3 d/w managing the Dutch Smart Industry program and 1d/w professor of Research Management at the science department of the Radboud University in Nijmegen.

At European level he is vice-chairman of EFFRA, the Factory-of-Future PPP, member of the high level group of Manufuture, sherpa for the KET, Key Enabling Technologie group and board member of EMIRI. EFFRA and EMIRI are the private side of the PPP on the KET advanced manufacturing and advanced materials.

Egbert-Jan Sol has a Master and Doctor degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He started his industrial career starting as robotics system architect, became project manager (Hoogovens), development manager (Philips) and manager of a 500 person R&D centre of Erisson. From 1990 till 1998 he was part time professor at Technology Management on Manufacturing Automation at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He was co-founder and is chairman of the 20 year old Digital City Eindhoven (www.dse.nl) community network.

“It is very easy to make technology complex, it is very difficult to make technology simple. Yet in manufacturing only the simplest workable solution becomes a success. ”