Hannover Messe 2016 is the biggest conference where industry heads come together to chat about where the world is going in the context of the world renowned fourth revolution, known as Industrie 4.0. Now that the conference is over, the immediate outlines of what the world should be expecting can now be summarized and contemplated. This year both Barack Obama and Angela Merkel attended the conference.
Obama spoke about the fully 3D printed electric car that the United States was showing off at the conference, joking that he would give it a test drive. He also pitched the United States as a world-class country where the companies attending should consider "setting up shop" in. "It's even easier for companies like yours to come and build in America," the President said. He underlined the fact that the United States and the European Union already have the largest trade and investment relationship in the world. Obama pointed out the numbers that this partnership has led to:
- 3 billion dollars of goods and services every single day
- Investment of $4 trillion in each other's economies
- 13 million jobs
Obama also ended his speech off by saying the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) policies that they are infusing into global law would assist a free and open internet. This would help the world of the Internet of Things, industrial automation and more.
Professor Thomas Bauernhansl, the Head of Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation told SAP TV: "What we see at the moment is that we try to connect all resources in production and that will offer us a completely new world for optimisation of the whole manufacturing processes."
Siemens was particularly instrumental in the topic of Industrie 4.0, who had one of the biggest stands at the conference this year.
Current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, also had a keynote at the show and gave his impressions on what the future of Industrie 4.0 will be. He said: "The very thing that you produce, the very thing that you manufacture, for the first time, is connected with all of the web of activity around it. It's not just the connection with everything, it is the ability to reason about that activity, that data that's being generated continuously."
A plethora of other companies showed off their robotics solutions for the impending revolution of automated factories that are connected to the internet. The fact that Merkel and Obama both attended the conference shows that Hannover Messe is now the most important showcase of industrial automation in the world today and will continue to grow into the conference that leads the conversation in what is next in that industry.
