Posted to News on 9th Feb 2014, 00:00
"Integrated Industry - NEXT STEPS" announced as lead theme for Hannover Messe 2014
The lead theme and official motto for Hannover Messe 2014 has been chosen: "Integrated Industry - NEXT STEPS." The choice reflects the fair's continued focus on integration as a challenge of pivotal importance for the future of industry and maps out the next steps along the road to tomorrow's intelligent, self-organizing factories. It also underscores Hannover Messe's status as the world's leading trade fair for industrial technology.
>"To stay competitive, industrial companies need to make their production processes as resource-efficient as possible. They need to be able to respond swiftly to changes in the market, while at the same time satisfying the growing demand for product individualization and customization," said Dr. Jochen K_ckler, Member of the Managing Board at Deutsche Messe - the organizers behind Hannover Messe. "The answer to these challenges has a name: Integrated Industry - a paradigm in which production processes are geared for maximum flexibility. Many technologies for implementing this paradigm have been developed over recent years. The next steps are about integrating these technologies into industrial production in such a way that they form a synchronized, harmonized and fully networked whole. And this is precisely the focus of HANNOVER MESSE 2014, namely the steps industry needs to take in order to get from its smart-factory vision to a real-life, integrated Industry 4.0 factory."
>Making the transition from smart-factory vision to Industry 4.0 reality requires a great deal of information sharing, discussion and coordination. One of the main challenges here is standardization - ensuring software compatibility across all the components, machines and factories that are to be networked with each other. "At the moment, each company's IT system speaks its own separate language. But now, in order to achieve integration, we need industry-wide agreement on a common 'international language of production,'" said K_ckler. "Under the banner of 'Integrated Industry - NEXT STEPS," Hannover Messe 2014 will present a number of pioneering approaches and initiatives in this area. The world's leading trade fair for industrial technology is the ideal forum for this, given that it integrates the areas of automation, energy, industrial sourcing and R&D."
>The aim of Integrated Industry is to achieve adaptable production systems that can respond immediately to accommodate fluctuations in global demand and highly specific customer requirements. These are intelligent systems in which all components - from workpieces to machines to transport systems - are connected to each other via a network and are able to communicate with each other autonomously. The workpieces are not passed from station to station along a rigidly configured production line. Instead, they autonomously activate the necessary modular processing centers and independently initiate each required processing step. This enables maximum flexibility and efficiency in industrial production runs of all sizes - including single-lot production runs.
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>"Flexibility and efficiency - these are the keys to continued survival in a highly competitive international market. Therefore, the task now is to take the next steps - and, more important, the right steps - to ensure that industry realizes its vision of smart, flexible factories. HANNOVER MESSE will play a key role in this with its 2014 lead theme of 'Integrated Industry - NEXT STEPS,'" said Köckler.
