Industry 4.0 conference at CHINAPLAS 2016

The Industrie 4.0 initiative of Germany, the Industrial Internet of USA and the New Robot Strategy of the Japanese government are few of the various national level strategies adopted by governments of developed manufacturing countries as they meet the demand for more competitive products and business operations.

In China, the "Made in China 2025" is the country’s initiative to promote new industrial growth, with a view of achieving "from size to strength" transformation. Smart manufacturing, a crucial element through which adaptation to the new environment becomes promising, is the common core of these projects. Chinese industries are in search of an extensive economic model that values R&D to cope with factors such as labor shortages, rising costs and intense competition from neighboring countries. In response, the Chinese government launched its "Made in China 2025" ten-year plan, a counterpart of Germany's Industrie 4.0, demonstrating China's increasing emphasis on industrial automation.

Thus, in this new smart manufacturing era, Asia's No.1 plastics and rubber trade fair, CHINAPLAS, which will be celebrating its 30th anniversary at Shanghai New International Expo Centre, PR China from April 25 to 28 this year, is keeping up with the global trend. The exhibition is promoting the "Smartly Made in China" movement via the Industry 4.0 Conference jointly organized with VDMA, the German Engineering Federation.

The conference is scheduled on April 26 and 27 at the fairground and covers such topics from strategic concepts to detailed solutions of intelligent manufacturing.  Latest modular and system solutions, as well as the operation of smart factories are being introduced for enterprises targeting manufacturing upgrade.

The extremely informative and practical topics include: Strategic transformation of smart factory (Haier Inc.); Plastics 4.0 – with Intelligent Machines to an Integrated Production (KraussMaffei); Individualized plastic parts in large series production - Combining IM and AM in a fully digitized process chain (Arburg); Inject 4.0 - solutions for a smart factory (ENGEL); An Overview on SAP Connected Manufacturing supporting Industries 4.0 (SAP); etc.

Representatives from major German manufacturers including Beckhoff Automation, Christian Maier, Leistritz Extrusionstechnik, Motan Holding, Reifenhäuser, Wittmann Battenfeld, as well as the Austrian corporation Erema Engineering Recycling Maschinen und Anlagen, have been invited to speak at the conference.  The conference emphasizes operational implementations of Industry 4.0, sharing solutions to realize manufacturing in a smart factory.  As quality and efficiency are at the heart of the "from size to strength" transition, the event also features discussions on how to increase productivity, production efficiency and product quality, and the level of automation in manufacturing.