Hannover Messe 2017: core themes, innovations and what to expect.
Value and integrated industry. Those are the keywords for Hannover Messe 2017, the largest industrial fair, organized in Germany’s Hannover on 24 -28 April.
Hannover Messe has been pivotal in the ‘birth’ of Industrie 4.0 and the going global of Industry 4.0. It’s at Hannover Messe (in 2011) that the ‘Industrie 4.0’ project was launched and at Hannover Messe that the results of the workgroups were presented and the reference architecture model was launched.
At the 2016 edition of Hannover Messe the initiative to come up with an Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index was announced to enable companies to design their Industry 4.0 roadmap. At Hannover Messe 2017 it is launched. An overview of what happens at the event.
What can you expect from Hannover Messe 2017?
The biggest industrial fair is poised to be even bigger in 2017 as Hannover Messe 2017 is organized in combination with logistics industry show CeMAT.
A logical move as the scope of Industry 4.0 is going beyond manufacturing. Keeping the ‘integrated industry’ approach and convergence of IT and OT in mind it would even make sense to bring back spin-off CeBIT (which is all about IT) under the Hannover Messe umbrella. However, while that would make complete sense in the Industry 4.0 context, it probably wouldn’t from the organizer’s perspective.
On top of the mentioned topics and the addition of logistics, Hannover Messe 2017 will again showcase intelligent automation, smart factory and floor productivity solutions with all the technologies and innovations involved.
The organizers expect over 200,000 visitors, there are more than 1,000 speakers and approximately 6,500 exhibitors from across the globe. In its teaser video, Hannover Messe also promises over 400 innovations in areas such as cobots, integrated energy, predictive maintenance, smart materials, digital twin and energy efficiency.
With the lead theme being integrated industry, the trade fair is organized around the following themes: 1) industrial automation, 2) motion, drive and automation, 3) digital factory, 4) energy, 5) ComVac (Compressed Air and Vacuum), 6) industrial supply and 7) research and technology.
The creation of value at Hannover Messe 2017
Back to the core theme of “Integrated Industry – Creating Value”. It’s clear that Industry 4.0 is maturing fast but that many organizations still wonder where to start and how to proceed.
It’s a universal given: the gap between the realization of the importance of Industry 4.0 and the readiness, let alone formal plan, to create value is still big.
We saw it in our overview in Industry 4.0 in the UK (where the EEF is working on awareness and strategic step-by-step approaches), we see it in research regarding Industry 4.0 in the US, the EU and really across the globe.
As mentioned, Hannover Messe 2017 sees the launch of an Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index which also aims to enable organizations to create value in a strategic approach that makes sense to them and their customers.
If we want the Industry 4.0 vision to really happen (it does here and there but it’s still early days), beyond the sheer objectives of optimization as is often the case now, showing the realized and tangible value in practice is what needs to happen.
We see the exact same phenomenon in the Internet of Things and Industrial Internet of Things: stop talking about it and focus on use cases and, more importantly on effective real-life cases to show companies what they can do when they understand the core learnings and sought benefits in tangible cases.
Integrated industry: the strategic and value-oriented roadmap at Hannover Messe 2017
While Germany’s Platform Industry 4.0 has started doing that, acatech (the German Academy of Science and Engineering which coined the term Industrie 4.0) is also doing it with plenty of initiatives such as the mentioned Maturity Index.
We see other initiatives across the globe such as the launch of Industrie 4.0 Digital Capability Centers by McKinsey and partners, Hannover Messe 2017 needs to deliver upon that message of value, among others by making sure that decision makers fully grasp the benefits that digitalization and the innovations (and ‘older’ technologies) for their business on the short, medium and long term (where that integrated industry view becomes even more important).
That’s what Jochen Köckler of the Managing Board of Deutsche Messe promised when presenting the highlights, partner country, topics, core theme of Hannover 2017.
As the infographic from Hannover Messe 2017 at the bottom of this page shows the theme of the development of integrated industry is not new. Yet, at Hannover Messe 2017 the creation of added value takes center stage.
Hannover Messe 2017 news and organizations/associations
On the website of Hannover Messe 2017 you find a news section and full overview of the numerous exhibitors, associations, research firms, businesses and so forth.
Below is the promised infographic on the core themes and value in the integrated industry.
All images are the property of their respective mentioned owners. The logo of Hannover Messe is the legal property of Deutsche Messe AG.
