With thousands of exhibitors and hundreds of thousands of attendees, you could be forgiven for finding Hannover Messe a little overwhelming. And if we’re honest, the show deals with some pretty overwhelming topics too, with ‘Digital Factories’ attracting a great deal of attention as manufacturers try to navigate the tricky path towards the digital revolution. In the eyes of many, the Smart Factory is a hugeleap that feels light years away.
But this year’s Hannover Messe promised to make digital transformation tangible – an idea that we at Hexagon fully endorse. We set out to show visitors to Hannover how today’s technology can ‘make it smarter’, bringing intelligence to current processes and building step-by-step towards a connected ecosystem for manufacturing; one that allows greater agility, improves productivity and drives sustainability. It’s still the Smart Factory, but delivered by evolution, not revolution. And the technology at Hannover convinced me that now is absolutely the right time to make a start.
Together with our friends at Ericsson, we demonstrated the potential of 5G connected factories and looked forward to how this low-latency wireless technology will enable greater use of artificial intelligence (AI). 5G connectivity will play an important role in helping Hexagon empower an increasingly autonomous future, and I’m really excited by the speed of development in this space. Elsewhere, our unique end-to-end tool chain for additive manufacturing (AM) generated a lot of interest with manufacturers who aspire to greater commercial application of AM. Visitors also got a sneak preview of our new cloud-based asset management solution, and the chance to see a window into the future of manufacturing via an interactive augmented reality experience.
Watch the Hannover Messe 2019 event mashup video to see highlights of all this and more.
