Welcome to Hanover home of the world's largest industrial fair with more than
6,500 manufacturing organizations
from Fortune 500 giants to
revolutionaries, start-ups, all descending to showcase their vision for
the future of manufacturing and industry
Launched in 1947 to boost the economic activity of post-war Germany
Hannover Messe has positioned itself as the leading edge of the country's
industrial output
but organizers say this year represents a pivotal shift for innovation in
manufacturing
an initiative the German government has termed industry 4.0
Well Hannover Messe is the worldwide most important show for industrial
technology and energy technology
and with the main theme being integrated industry that's why the show is
enjoying such a height right now
You've heard of the Internet of Things
but industry 4.0 transitions these same ideas from the consumer market
to large-scale production lines
Of course you have your smart homes, you have your smart cars, and the next step is the
smart factory - then that's gonna be the future of production
because products have to be produced more and more individual, more and more flexible
and that is
only possible if you have IT in your production processes
A vision has given birth to the ultimate in smart manufacturing
this is Smart Factory, a production line
unveiled at the Messe to showcase what happens when
every element of a production workflow moves online
Smart Factory is the factory consisting of smart elements, smart objects that means that
all the elements of the factory that means sensors
plus also the parts itself also the people working there
are connected to the Internet and apart
of such a network in the factory
Led by the German government center for
artificial intelligence
Smart Factory is more than just a factory
It's a united software platform
that connects modules from
huge manufacturing mainstays like Phoenix Contact and Siemens
to independent start-ups
individual modules that would typically
not work together
we have standards so you can put things together but you can also
quickly rearrange
all these things because you always have the same standard so just
plug and play
the system also allows production lines to be redeployed
almost instantly by the manufacturer or customized by a customer
when they place an order
Everyone likes to have this
individualized product and this means that we have more and more to
change our production systems in a very very short time
The Smart Factory's answer is this
a tiny chip that travels with each individual product
on the production line identifying what it is,
who the customer is, and triggering customization throughout the process
So how would something like this work?
The customer can choose his very own
what the ones
which color he wants to have, which print he wants to have
for example and then this will be produced in these modules here
so what you see other different production models
and there already the information
of the customer is stored in this RFID chip so now the RFID chip
is really controlling the flow of objects in this line for example
each of these modules have been built by different companies
they are equipped by different technologies so different controllers
different sensors and actors of all these companies so here the
customized information will be printed
on this little cover here by this laser
and finally we go to quality control will show up
over here and the customer now can pick this up
The technology also lowers environmental impact
grouping similar orders together and powering off systems when they're not needed
and while the demo creates something as simple as personalized business card
holders
the capabilities of the system run much deeper
take for example the smartphones which we produce - they have a lifetime
of a couple of months only and then we have to change something
we can apply the same idea to car production and any other production as
well
But the rush to connect smarter factories is by no means a one-horse
race
in April the US government announced funding for digital manufacturing
Commons
a similar program led by a consortium US manufacturers
and similar projects are emerging from the east
I think everyone's under the pressure to move into this direction and therefore I think
a lot of things will change in the future and they will be able to follow
these standards but we have to be fast because other nations around the world
are sometimes faster