Ausgabe zur AUTOMATICA 2018

Ausg.Nr._12.1/2018 5 automatica 2018 19.–22.06.2018 A utomatica 2018, in Munich from June 19 to 22, is getting a new integrated subject area with IT2Industry. It focuses on the in- terplay between automation and information technology, which is a core component of digital automation and robotics. IT2In- dustry provides companies with guidance on current digitaliza- tion trends in industry, promis- ing strategies and important IoT technologies. The industrial Internet of things (the Industry 4.0 concept) will play the leading role in the fu- ture. Highly complex, automated production machines and robots are networked with each other and throughout a company. This creates multi-site, flexible pro- duction systems, which not only produce automatically, but which also control themselves as well as service and maintain themselves to a great extent. The consulting company PwC estimated in a re- cent study that German industry will invest an average of 3.3 per- cent of its annual sales in Industry 4.0 solutions over the next five years. This corresponds to almost 50 percent of the planned new equipment investments and an annual investment of more than 40 billion euros relative to the entire German industry. In order for Industry 4.0 applica- tions to function, companies must invest in IoT platforms, among other things, which connect the machines to the Internet as well as safeguard, analyze and con- trol them and provide the neces- sary interfaces for access to ap- plications and other systems. In a survey conducted among 385 IT decision makers primarily from the manufacturing sector in au- tumn of 2017 by IDG, 57 percent of the respondents stated that IoT platforms are an indispen- sable technology. It is already used by approx. 22 percent of re- spondents. In combination with IoT, those surveyed cited security technologies (53 percent) and cloud computing (48 percent) as also essential. In the same study, 64 percent of respondents estimated the importance of IoT for their own company as “very high” or “high”. The best of two worlds: IT and automation in production Nevertheless, the manufacturing sector is considered as only “mod- erately” digitalized with 42 index points,accordingtotheMonitoring Report Wirtschaft Digital. Accord- ing to the investigation conducted by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, this industry is consequently lagging significantly behind comparatively highly digitalized sectors such as the information technology and telecommunications industry and providers of financial and insur- ance service. This lagging behind has various causes, and the high complexity of digitalizing production is cer- tainly one of them. Digitalization presents two main challenges for industry: the digitalization of pro- duction and the digitalization of business models and processes. The digitalization of production is the focus of automatica 2018. This involves linking complex, highly- automated production machines and robots “intelligently” with state-of-the-art IT and Internet connectivity to get the best of two worlds: the low cost of mass pro- duction with substantial customer proximity and customization of solutions for craft enterprises or factories. IT2Industry, the subject area of automatica, consequently brings together two worlds: IT and automa- tion. In this area, something is actu- ally growing together now, which belongs together in times of digitali- zation. In the subject area IT2Indus- try, not only relevant software and hardware providers, integrators and consultancies are exhibiting, but there will also be intensive discus- sions about robotic automation, big data, cloud, security and of course IoT. The exhibitors include both tra- ditional IT vendors such as Trend Micro Deutschland and proALPHA Business Consulting as well as com- panies that offer practical industry 4.0/IoT applications or platforms, for example, Essert, WidasConcepts, fabrikado and SW Schwäbische Werkzeugmaschinen.  Text & Image: Messe München GmbH Messegelände D-81823 München IT2Industry at automatica 2018: What belongs together is growing together