HANNOVER MESSE 2013 pushes the 4th industrial revolution: Integrated Industry

The 2013 HANNOVER MESSE trade fair forindustrial technology, which attracted 6,550 exhibitors from 62 nations and nearly 225,000 attendees in April, featured the keynote theme “Integrated Industry.” Integrated industry is the concept of growing integration in all areas of industry to improve efficiency by shortening communication channels and making collaboration more proficient. It assumes that machine, industrial equipment, work pieces and system components will soon be able to exchange data in real time, which should boost not only efficiency, but also safety and resource sustainability in production and logistics, according to Dr. Jochen Köckler, a member of the Deutsche Messe Executive Board.

"The experts have dubbed this technological development thefourth industrial revolution, coming as it does after the steam engine, mass production and automation,” he explains.

At HANNOVER MESSE 2013, 11 vertical trade shows occurred simultaneously, enabling attendees to see the benefits of cross-industry networking and integration related to specific issues that each industry faces and the methods of integration between those areas. The individual shows and their integrated industry themes included:

• Industrial automation (Embedded systems, smart production)
• Motion, drive and automation (Condition monitoring systems displays)
• Energy (Smart grids)
• Wind (Integrated wind turbine maintenance and control systems)
• MobiliTec (Electric mobility technologies)
• Digital Factory (Process integration, interdisciplinary product development, systems engineering)
• ComVac (Compressed air technology)
• Industrial supply (Production chains and subcontracting)
• Surface Technology (Nanotechnology)
• Industrial Green Tec (Environmental management system integration)
• Research and technology (Early stage interaction between science and business)

As the industrial landscape continues to change, the success of individual companies and entire countries in the international marketplace will increasingly depend on their level of industrial integration, according to aHANNOVER MESSE press release. It claims that industry experts agree that integrated approaches to manufacturing will have a significant worldwide impact over the next 10 of 15 years and beyond.

In essence, integrated industry is a fundamental restructuring of production processes. HANNOVER MESSE explains the process as follows: In the future, intelligent materials will communicate with machines to tell them 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 triggering the remedial measures to prevent further damage and initiate repair work.

One tool that will enable integrated industry is the Internet, which already has 340 sextillion unique IP addresses available for identifying networked machines. Experts predict that in less than 10 years, there will be more than 50 billion devices networked with each other via the Internet.

“Enabling people in production facilities and beyond to collaborate with each other is the first step along the way to integration,” says Köckler. “Increasingly, companies from very different industries will enter into partnerships with one another, thereby opening up previously undreamt-of horizons.”

Get theHANNOVER MESSE after-show report.

Contact:James Carroll, Senior Web Editor, Vision Systems Design