EMO Hannover 2013: Intelligence in Production

No one can do without the internet. The world’s premier trade fair for the metalworking sector, the EMO Hannover 2013 (16 to 21 September) will be themed around it too. Under the motto “Intelligence in Production”, internet-based applications will be presented that go far beyond existing online ordering options, one-click orders, and networked tele-maintenance. The vision of the brave new internet world, in which entire production lines in smart factories are controlled over a smartphone, is no longer all that unrealistic.

Light switched on briefly and then off again, heating turned down low, blinds unsuspiciously half-open – Fred Appler, owner of a mid-tier component supplier firm, puts down his mobile phone with satisfaction: everything’s okay at home. He’s just about to lean back in his deckchair on the Baltic coast, when his new machining centre calls. “Hi boss, the current order’s been completed, what shall I do now?” Fred thinks about it briefly, enters a few commands, and the machine displays a confirmation: “Ok boss, consider it done”, and Fred knows now that everything’s running like clockwork in the production hall back home as well.

Apps are cutting-edge IT – with modern-day mobile-phone house-elves, you can nowadays control machines, lines and components from your smartphone. More than 21 million Germans (a good one in four of the total population) are, according to the latest figures from the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (Bitkom), Berlin, meanwhile using smartphone programs, known as apps, on their mobile phones. On average, each smartphone owner has installed 23 apps, one in seven even has more than 40. There are now apps available for every situational possibility – all the way through to a pensioner’s app that in an emergency shows you the way to the nearest on-duty doctors and pharmacists.

In the estimation of Dr. rer. nat. Volkmar Denner, Board Chairperson responsible for research and advance development, technology coordination, product planning and engineering at Robert Bosch GmbH, “we all have to realise we’re facing a paradigm shift, that our business life is going to change fundamentally due to the internet of things andNike Air Max 2017