Hannover Messe 2024: Review of Exhibitors

Trade fair review Impressions from Hannover Messe 2024

2024-04-26 Source: Deutsche Messe AG | Translated by AI 3 min Reading Time

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This year's Hannover Messe drew numerous people worlds leading Industry show. What was it like on site? How satisfied are the exhibiting companies?

Again this year, visitors in Hanover should find answers to the question of how they can use automation, AI, hydrogen, and other solutions sensibly in their production environments.(Image: Deutsche Messe AG) — Again this year, visitors in Hanover should find answers to the question of how they can use automation, AI, hydrogen, and other solutions sensibly in their production environments.
(Image: Deutsche Messe AG)

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On Monday, April 22, the doors of the exhibition halls opened for all visitors. According to Deutsche Messe AG, a total of over 130,000 visitors from 150 countries made their way to Hanover. More than 40 percent of them traveled from abroad. According to the trade fair operators, the top visitor countries after Germany were China, the Netherlands, the USA, Korea, and Japan. "This means that in a year of a rotationally smaller Hannover Messe, we have reached our ambitious visitor target," states Dr. Jochen Köckler, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Deutsche Messe AG, at the final press conference.

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AWS also put a special focus on artificial intelligence and specific use cases in the industrial environment this year. One of these was the "e-Bike Smart Factory" demo. Various industrial IoT and AI/ML services from AWS, such as IoT Site Wise or Monitron, generative AI services, such as Bedrock, and application services like AWS Supply Chain, were used at the interactive production line.(Image: Vogel Communications Group)

At the Secunet stand, interested parties could witness a simulated attack on the control center of a power plant. The attack targets the OT network of the wind turbines, which are secured with the Secunet Edge product. The attack detection is carried out via Secunet Monitor KRITIS, which is visualized on monitors via a dashboard. At the same time, a connected signal lamp provides optical hints on the respective threat situation. In addition to this, one receives a message on the smartphone via the communication app Stashcat Messenger, which contains an executable command for direct reaction to the attack. This allows one to react directly from the app and isolate the attack.(Image: Vogel Communications Group)

On the first day of the fair, IFM and Microsoft agreed on a partnership to jointly further develop IIoT solutions from IFM based on Microsoft Azure. Visitors to the stand could already learn about the first results of this collaboration, such as the new Remote Connect module, which is part of the Moneo IIoT cloud solution and is based on Microsoft Azure. This module allows users to securely monitor and maintain machinery and systems remotely. In the future, an increasing number of IFM products are expected to be developed to be compatible with Azure.(Image: Vogel Communications Group)

At the spacious Phoenix Contact booth, visitors were able to gain a comprehensive insight into new products, solutions, and digitization competencies for electrification, networking, and automation. The company aims to support industry and society on the path to a sustainable world with long-term growth prospects. The offering includes a wide range of products: from charging technology for electric mobility to an open software platform that enables secure data exchange and control between IT and OT.(Image: Vogel Communications Group)

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They were expected by 4,000 exhibiting companies and 300 startups. Dr. Gunther Kegel, President of the ZVEI and Chairman of the exhibitor advisory board of the fair, commented: "In the currently difficult economic environment, this year's Hanover Fair is an important mood enhancer. The electrical and digital industries have impressively demonstrated how innovation, especially the use of artificial intelligence, opens up new options for action. For more climate protection, for more efficiency in energy consumption and resource use."

At the trade fair stands, in addition to solutions such as the automation of entire production plants and the voice control of machines through AI, there were also information on the efficient use of hydrogen in industry or the use of software for recording and reducing the CO₂ footprint. The initiative to create sovereign data spaces for medium-sized industry under the Manufacturing-X label is also gaining momentum. New fields such as the biologization of the economy or carbon management also received more attention this year.

International cooperation continues to be expanded

On site, the organizers also welcomed over 300 economic policy delegations from all over the world. Competitive energy costs, the expansion of digital infrastructure, fast approval processes, a reduction of unnecessary bureaucracy, and the influx of qualified workers were at the top of the delegations' agenda.

The trade fair organizers see this year's partner country Norway as a prime example of pan-European cooperation. On Tuesday, German Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, together with Norwegian Energy Minister Terje Aasland, presented the roadmap for hydrogen cooperation. Germany and Norway will work closely together to realize large-volume hydrogen imports from Norway to Germany and the necessary hydrogen infrastructure by 2030. At the Hannover Messe, companies from Norway and Germany signed contracts for the transport of hydrogen and the storage of CO₂, so-called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Visibility of Women in Industry

The Femworx career congress took place at the Hannover Messe again this year on April 25 - this time spread over two days. As part of the opening of the congress, Yvonne Groth, Managing Director of Dornier Construction and Service GmbH, was awarded the Engineer Woman Award. A day later, Sahana Shastry, systems engineer at DSI Aerospace, received the Young Engineer Woman Award. An independent jury, consisting of members of the congress advisory board, had nominated four experts for this award in advance.

Hermes Award goes to Schunk

This year, the company Schunk was honored with the Hermes Award for an AI-based project as part of the trade fair opening. Bettina Stark-Watzinger, German Federal Minister of Education and Research, presented the award in the presence of German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

The jury, chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, President of the Fraunhofer Society, had previously awarded the project 2D Grasping-Kit. This application kit consists of a camera with lens, an industrial PC, an AI software, and an application-specific gripper. According to the jury, the innovation lies in the generic, AI-based modeling of component variances and the transfer to a smaller training data set, which is supposed to reduce learning times for recognition. The intuitively operated user interface enables process-safe handling of various, randomly arranged parts from a conveyor belt, tray, or provisioning table - even with changing light, color, or background conditions. This should allow for the automation of recurring sorting or logistics tasks with little effort.

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