You’d probably expect Diego and I to be flagging on the final (fifth) day. If you’d asked my feet, the answer would be yes, but from an information gathering standpoint, absolutely not!
From a visitor perspective, it was a slow day. The throngs of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were nowhere to be seen. What throngs there were, (as per previous days) centred on those with appealing stands. There were some stands/companies who shall remain nameless…but you know who you are…. that were, to be frank, disappointing and all the emptier on the Friday. Shame on them for having (many, MANY) screens showing text….no visual (or practical) examples of products, no working solutions or graphic marketing messages. A lesson to be learned for next year perhaps?
Diego and I spent some more time on stands in the digital halls, starting with a brief look at some more additive (3DPrinter) companies in hall 6. Nothing recorded, but worthy of a picture or three…
Interoperability and collaboration were highly visible themes at this year’s Hannover Messe and many companies showcased their ability to (more easily) connect to other software and hardware (eco) systems. We thought, whom better to speak to than the Industrial Internet Consortium and OPC Foundation on the topic? Both have significant presence and momentum in the digital manufacturing space, and both will undoubtedly play a big part in defining, promoting and standardising our digital manufacturing future. Kathy Walsh, from the Industrial Internet Consortium explains the what and why of her organisation.
Thomas Gaudet, from Kepware (a part of PTC) explained his company’s product and the raison-detre of the OPC Foundation.
Amongst the many highlights of the show were the many demonstrations that reflected practical use cases for AI and Machine learning. One that both Diego and I were drawn to was an elegant (and simple to understand) demonstration on these technologies for use in Quality control and Predictive Analytics. Tobias Stoeckel from IBM Germany took time to explain:
We stopped off at German simulation specialist CADFEM. Christof Gebhard showed us the recently released and highly dynamic simulation product, Ansys Discovery Live.
The next blog post has our conclusions of the event.