Hannover Messe: Industry 4.0 Has Become a Reality

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“Integrated Industry - Discover Solutions” is the slogan of this year’s Hannover Messe, which will open its doors on 25 April. Member companies and the VDMA can present a great number of solutions for the workings of the factories of the future and for making Industry 4.0 a reality in Hanover. “Industry 4.0 has become a reality with intelligent products, production lines and value chains,” says VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann. New business models for digital and interconnected production are being developed across the board and will be put on display in Hanover. “Anything you see at the stands there can be profitably deployed in your business. Thanks to its specific and profound knowledge of production and customer needs, German mechanical engineering has the edge here,” Brodtmann points out.

In numerous presentations, discussions and press conferences at this year’s Hannover Messe, the VDMA will make it clear that mechanical engineering stands at the heart of the tremendous changes that will shape commercial life in the years to come. For “Industry 4.0 is a project that will take decades,” stresses the VDMA Executive Director. And the overwhelming majority of mechanical engineering firms have got under way: “Around 20 percent are very far ahead, a proportion twice as large as in the manufacturing industry as a whole. And all have realised that machinery, software and IT must coalesce in the future,” says Brodtmann.

The modernisation of the economy is also being promoted forcefully in the partner country of this year’s Hannover Messe, the USA, under the catchphrase “Internet of Things”. “But we have nothing to fear from the Americans,” stresses the VDMA Executive Director. “We are in a good position in this race, and at some point the approaches on both sides of the Atlantic will coalesce into one giant whole.” The close ties between German mechanical engineers and their partners in the USA were recently documented again in a survey of VDMA member companies and also form part of the VDMA’s European policy welcome event held on the first evening of the trade fair: the European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström and the US Trade Representative Michael Froman will discuss with guests the progress of the planned TTIP free-trade agreement.

Solutions for the amalgamation of Industry 4.0 and the energy transition will also be presented and discussed in Hanover. The VDMA is a mover and shaker here too, e.g. for the newly designed leading trade fair “Energy” and the “Life Needs Power” forum, at which questions will be discussed such as: What consequences will digitalisation have on the energy industry? What are Google’s prospects in the energy sector? What will the energy transition look like in our cities? “The key word for the world of tomorrow is interconnectivity. And no industrial sector is better prepared for this than mechanical engineering – right across all segments,” the VDMA Executive Director concludes.