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Hannover Messe 2019, Day 2: New partnerships, new Partner Country

Open Industry 4.0 alliance formed, Indonesia named Partner Country for 2020, TSN testbed released

By Bob Vavra April 3, 2019

Hannover Messe is a place to debut new products, but also to forge new partnerships. One such partnership, the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance, brings together mechanical, automation and software suppliers to “overcome proprietary solutions and give a decisive boost to the digital transformation of the European industry.”

The founding members of the alliance all are global leaders: Beckhoff, Endress+Hauser, Hilscher, ifm, KUKA, Multivac and SAP, and other companies such as Balluff, Gebhardt, Pepperl+Fuchs, Schmidtsche Schack, Samson and WIKAalso have joined.

“The open architecture of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance meets all the requirements of the process industry,” said Matthias Altendorf, CEO of the Endress+Hauser Group in a press release announcing the alliance. “It is based on standards, ensures transparency across all business processes and guarantees the integrity of the systems. This enables process plant operators to leverage the potential of digitalization.”

The goal for the group is to develop an Open Industry 4.0 Framework “based on existing standards such as I/O Link, OPC UA and RAMI for the entire route from objects in the workshop to services,” the alliance members said in a press release. “The connection to the SAP software portfolio ensures the integration of a company’s business processes as well as collaboration with partners across company boundaries. The open architecture allows the simple connection of further system landscapes.”

Indonesia will be Hannover Messe 2020 Partner Country

Hannover Messe officials announced Tuesday that Indonesia would be the partner Country for Hannover Messe 2020 on April 20-24.

The “Making Indonesia 4.0” initiative is focused on five key sectors: food and beverage, textiles, automotive, chemicals, and electronics. The government-supportive initiative is designed to expand the country’s global manufacturing influence beyond the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), where it already has the largest economy.

“Integrating the ‘Making Indonesia 4.0’ initiative into the national agenda is critical to Indonesia, because manufacturing is the key economic driver and contributes more than 20 percent of GDP – the largest share among all sectors,” said Airlangga Hartarto, Minister of Industry, Republic of Indonesia, at the ceremony announcing the Partner Country status. “As Partner Country of Hannover Messe 2020, we will introduce the “Making Indonesia 4.0″ roadmap to the world and seek investments to upgrade manufacturing capabilities and develop a digital infrastructure.”

“Indonesia is an emerging economic power in Southeast Asia with strength in the manufacturing and energy industries. We are confident that this diverse country will use its opportunities as partner country of Hannover Messe and present itself as a reliable and cooperative investment location,” said Dr. Jochen Köckler, chief executive officer of Deutsche Messe AG.

TSN Testbed on display by Industrial Internet Consortium

The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), a CFE Media content partner, discussed the results of its Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) Testbed for Flexible Manufacturing at Hannover Messe on Tuesday. The TSN testbed is designed to demonstrate the capabilities around improving closed loop control.

“Typically, these systems have been deployed using non-standard network infrastructure or air-gapped (unconnected) standard networks,” IIC officials said in a press release. “This approach leaves devices and data much harder to access and creates a technical barrier to IIoT which is predicated on the ability to consume data anywhere throughout the infrastructure.

“To address these needs of IIoT all the way to the control system, the IEEE organization has been working to update the standards for Ethernet and wireless (IEEE 802) to support TSN,” they added. “The technology will be used to support real-time control and synchronization of high performance machines over a single, standard Ethernet network, supporting multi-vendor interoperability and integration.”

Now in its third year, the IIC TSN Testbed is focusing on TSN configuration and management and support for key Industrial Automation protocols, including the OPC Foundation’s new Field-Level Communication initiative.


Author Bio: Bob is the Content Manager for Plant Engineering.