The upcoming Hannover Messe 2013 will be staged under the banner of "Integrated Industry." The lead theme signals the fair’s key focus on the growing integration of all areas of industry.
"Machines, industrial equipment, work pieces and system components will soon be capable of exchanging data in real-time. This will significantly boost efficiency, safety and resource sustainability in production and logistics," saiys Dr. Jochen Köckler, a member of the Deutsche Messe Board of Management. "The experts have dubbed this technological development the fourth industrial revolution, coming, as it does, after the steam engine, mass production and automation."
A complete new field "Integrated Industry" not only could be defined in terms of technical and electronic integration, but also in terms of the challenge faced by all areas of industry as they seek to cooperate across corporate and sector boundaries. Integration would shorten communication channels and make collaboration more efficient. The goal of rapidly integrating all systems necessitates a fundamental restructuring of production processes.
Smart embedded systems… In the future, intelligent materials will tell machines how they want to be processed and formed. Parts and assemblies will have autonomous digital product memories that will facilitate continuous documentation throughout their entire lifecycles. Components will initiate their own maintenance and repair requests. And intelligent components in complex equipment will independently report faults to monitoring systems, thereby instantly triggering the remedial measures necessary to prevent further damage and initiate repair work.
…it’s for today Inline measuring technology gives systems a sixth sense – for preventive detection of errors, monitoring of tolerances and integrated process control. For a number of years, production machines have been evolving extremely rapidly: from what was once a purely productive unit, they have since been transformed into strategic sources of information, and they have a direct impact on the level of productivity. The targeted use of sensors and measuring technology has a positive effect on the entire production chain: the machine running time is fully utilised, wastage is prevented, service lives can be planned and procurement processes optimised. (Do not miss our next issue with an extensive article on this topic with Addi-Data).
To be discovered at Hannover Messe.
