The Industrial Transformation Stage in Hall 3 is dedicated to cross-technology interchange and cross-industry networking. The spotlight will be on the latest trends for smart, energy-efficient and sustainable production. Partners and experts from a variety of disciplines will present high-class sequences and offer use cases, insights and solutions. Over the five days of the tradeshow, the focus will be on the five megatrends of industry as well as the current topic of ESG – Environmental, Social, Governance. These three buzzwords stand for the topic of sustainability and range from climate change and workforce diversity to sustainable financing strategies.

On Monday at the fair, Deutsche Messe is organizing a panel sponsored by the WomenPower career congress. Discussing the topic of decarbonization will be Judith Wiese, Member of the Board of Management at Siemens AG, Kamila Flidr, Director of Material Information at Altair, Lisa Reehten, member of executive management at Bosch Climate Solutions, Bosch Group, and Dr. Frauke Reinders, Head of Sustainability Management within IMA at Phoenix Contact. On Monday afternoon, the stage program will be devoted to the World Economic Forum.

On Tuesday, April 18, the Industrial Transformation Stage will focus on AI in industry – and not only for the major players. Robert Weber and Peter Seeberg, creators of the podcast of the same name, have put together an exciting program. Industrial applications in the field of artificial intelligence often differ significantly from consumer applications. On the panel, five companies will present their applications. Among the highlights: Visitors will learn how Hawe Hydraulik, a medium-sized mechanical engineering company, is taking advantage of AI, or how a large corporation like Siemens uses it. In addition, two young companies will present how they are planning to fundamentally change industrial processes with their solution – Werk24 and Monolith AI. All panelists will provide insights into their projects, discuss with moderators and answer audience questions.

The day will conclude with the presentation of the MIMA 2023 Microsoft Intelligent Manufacturing Award, which recognizes new technologies and intelligent solutions for manufacturing companies that contribute to process or product improvement, open up new revenue opportunities, or have a positive impact on sustainability and energy efficiency.

Wednesday, April 19, is Buyers’ Day at the tradeshow. This is when the German Purchasing and Logistics Association (BME) is organizing a panel for buyers. The purchasing world is uniquely challenged nowadays. The corona crisis and the war in Ukraine have highlighted the risks of globalized procurement strategies, and materials supply has grown in importance as opposed to pure cost savings and, in addition to changes in the real economy, legal regulations – for example with the Supply Chain Sourcing Obligations Act – are placing even greater demands on supplier management. The BME Buyers’ Day at HANNOVER MESSE offers all buyers an excellent opportunity to gain a quick overview of a wide range of supplier offerings and to make important contacts on these topics, exchange ideas with experts and treat themselves to a wealth of knowledge on the current situation in the world of procurement in the course of informative presentations.

On Thursday at the trade fair, April 21, the Industrial Transformation Stage will kick off with the panel “Decentralized! Resilient! Renewable! Is energy self-sufficient industry an unattainable ideal or a realistic opportunity?” Speakers include Prof. Dr. Julia Arlinghaus, Director of the Fraunhofer IFF Magdeburg, Frank Stührenberg, CEO, Phoenix Contact, and Heinrich Gärtner, Founder and CTO of GP Joule. Afterwards, CEOs of globally leading companies in compressed air and vacuum technology will discuss the discrepancy between theory and practice. Speakers include: Thomas Kaeser (Kaeser Compressors), A. Can Dirin (Lupamat Makina), Olaf Hoppe (Boge Compressors), Helen Landhäusser (LOOXR) and Klaus Peter Glöckner (Aerzener Maschinenfabrik). On behalf of the co-organizer VDMA Compressors, Compressed Air and Vacuum Technology, Christoph Singrün will provide an overview of the relevant activities in the field.

Industrie 4.0 is an umbrella brand grouping together sensor manufacturers, automation companies, robotics builders, software producers and users. The term gave rise to a new enthusiasm for automation and thus also for the digitization of industrial processes – inspiring many young people to sign on at industrial enterprises as a result.

The promises were great. But what about the goals – has everything been achieved? Definitely not. Criticism of the term “Industrie 4.0” also comes from the fact that it was highly politically charged and that at the beginning, every component was to be made “intelligent” while often failing to pay off, and that productivity failed to skyrocket.

In the early years, people tried to emulate Silicon Valley corporations. The fever of digitization was contagious. In the meantime, people are considering their own strengths and, of all things, the tech corporations have increasingly sought contact with German SMEs and Industrie 4.0. Companies are reaping the initial benefits of those years and will be showcasing this at HANNOVER MESSE.

The “administration shell” was, and is, a showcase project, providing a standardized description of components that many exhibitors at HANNOVER MESSE are now building on in order to offer their customers added value. The administration shell is closely linked to the topic of the “digital twin”. On the first day of the show, industry representatives will discuss the “standardized digital twin for a sustainable industry”. This digital twin is also a crucial element for Lenze on its NUPANO platform, as machine and plant builders want to tap into new sources of revenue. The pressure on them is growing, because they need to differentiate themselves through additional digital offerings. However, they often lack the appropriate resources and the necessary expertise to get the job done. Lenze’s NUPANO Open Automation Platform is designed to help, offering a space for digital innovations at machine and plant level and creating access to new business models – without any prior IT (information technology) knowledge required on the part of the user. In doing so, this exhibitor from the German state of Lower Saxony is relying upon open, proven IT architectures and technologies to build a bridge from operational technology (OT) to the IT universe.

HANNOVER MESSE is the perfect showcase for Industrie 4.0. It’s still all about connected machines, sensors, data, information and new business models, but also about a new way of thinking in industry: Companies need to be present on platforms and need to develop and operate their own platforms. Automation companies need to collaborate with customers, but also need to think in open source (ROS2 in robotics), develop products jointly, involve young companies and new industries such as the gaming industry (gaming engines in robotics), learn from one another, work together in new constellations (“coopetition”) and earn money with other business cases (subscription). This is not always easy, and Industrie 4.0 thus also becomes a cultural and educational issue.

Festo Didactic, for example, offers comprehensive training and qualification programs for Industrie 4.0 with its CP Factory – the universal Industrie 4.0 research and learning platform. Festo CTO Ansgar Kriwet recently emphasized at an internal event that digitization is a major learning topic. At the same time, he gave a preview of future products. Put simply: The company will be offering a multipurpose hardware as a software-defined product packed with AI.

Kunbus proves that open source and industry can go together with its hardware based on a Raspberry Pi. The S and SE series represent a further development of the Revolution Pi’s basic modules RevPi Core, RevPi Connect and RevPi Flat. Equipped with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 S, the modules now feature the powerful 4-core Broadcom BCM2711 Arm Cortex-A72 processor.

But what’s next? Some people are already talking about Industry 5.0, but the SmartFactory from Kaiserslautern, Germany, certainly has a realistic view of tomorrow’s manufacturing. With their Production Level 4 demonstrator landscape, the makers appear to be a step ahead of the ManufacturingX initiative. Many ManufacturingX ideas have already been implemented in the SmartFactory-KL, as this Rhineland-Palatinate-based company confidently announced in the run-up to the tradeshow. In Hannover, everyone learns from each other. “Coopetition” is just what the doctor ordered.