EMO Hannover 2019 provides clarity in uncertain times Trade fair builds on successful previous event

EMO Han­nover 2019 closed its doors today fol­low­ing a six-day run. From 16 to 21 Sep­tem­ber, round about 117,000 pro­duc­tion spe­cial­ists from 150 coun­tries con­vened at the world’s lead­ing tradeshow for the met­al­work­ing indus­try. “This EMO Han­nover 2019 built on the suc­cess of our boom year in 2017,” report­ed EMO Gen­er­al Com­mis­sion­er Carl Mar­tin Wel­ck­er. He con­tin­ued: “In the con­text of sub­dued eco­nom­ic expec­ta­tions over the past sev­er­al months, the mod­er­ate decline in atten­dance has to be viewed as a suc­cess. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly delight­ed at the fur­ther increase in the per­cent­age of for­eign atten­dees.” The mood in the halls was pos­i­tive, with many exhibitors pleas­ant­ly sur­prised at the high vol­ume of vis­i­tor traf­fic at their stands. “EMO Han­nover has once again proved sol­id as a rock, pro­vid­ing clar­i­ty for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, even in uncer­tain times,” Wel­ck­er added. Its trade­marks includ­ed a strong inter­na­tion­al char­ac­ter, a high cal­iber of vis­i­tors and exhibitors, and an amaz­ing wealth of inno­va­tions and new prod­ucts, he stressed. As the world’s lead­ing met­al­work­ing fair, it was the “place to be”.

Carl Martin Welcker, EMO General Commissioner, (r) and Dr. Wilfried Schäfer, CEO of the EMO event organizer VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association), looking back on a successful EMO Hannover 2019
Carl Mar­tin Wel­ck­er, EMO Gen­er­al Com­mis­sion­er, ® and Dr. Wil­fried Schäfer, CEO of the EMO event orga­niz­er VDW (Ger­man Machine Tool Builders’ Asso­ci­a­tion), look­ing back on a suc­cess­ful EMO Han­nover 2019

Mixed mood – invest­ment-readi­ness bodes well for post-show business 

Exhibitors with a broad cus­tomer base were sat­is­fied with the run of the fair. In the words of Dr. Wolf­gang Heur­ing, CEO of the Erlan­gen-based Motion Con­trol Busi­ness Unit at Siemens: “The lev­el of vis­i­tor inter­est at our stand this year was incred­i­ble. We are delight­ed at the way things have gone.” Oth­er firms with a stronger focus on the pas­sen­ger car indus­try seemed to be less upbeat about the sit­u­a­tion. “Firms are clear­ly more reluc­tant to com­mit them­selves, giv­en the gen­er­al uncer­tain­ty over where the mar­ket is head­ing,” remarked Dr. Chris­t­ian Lang, CEO of Lieb­herr-Verzah­n­tech­nik in Kempten. “But our dis­cus­sions with cus­tomers at our stand have still been sub­stan­tive and very promis­ing for the future,” he added. While some exhibitors spoke of a his­toric par­a­digm shift in the auto­mo­tive indus­try, which still need­ed to be mas­tered, oth­er exhibitors report­ed suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ing busi­ness deals with automak­ers dur­ing the fair.

At the start of EMO Han­nover, there was some wor­ry about the news that many cus­tomers were cut­ting their trav­el bud­gets. Yet the per­cent­age of com­pa­ny exec­u­tives among tradeshow atten­dees was about as high as two years ago, at 58 per­cent. Around half of these came armed with cap­i­tal invest­ment plans, and for for­eign vis­i­tors, this fig­ure was even high­er, at more than 62 per­cent. 25 per­cent of atten­dees actu­al­ly placed orders dur­ing the fair or planned to do so in the near future. And a fur­ther 20 per­cent intend­ed to spend mon­ey down­stream from the fair. “We’ve had a lot of dis­cus­sions focus­ing on spe­cif­ic cus­tomer require­ments. Many users are care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing which cap­i­tal expen­di­tures they need to best posi­tion them­selves for the future,” said Matthias Funk, CEO of Hedelius Ver­trieb­s­ge­sellschaft in Meppen.

The main focus was on expan­sion and replace­ment invest­ments in flex­i­ble man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­duc­tion machines, tools and automa­tion. “First we need to find out what is hap­pen­ing in the indus­try, then we will make our invest­ment deci­sions after EMO is over,” says Kiyokazu Sugiya­ma of Nis­san Motor Co. Ltd., Yoko­hama, after spend­ing three days at the fair tak­ing a close look at all the dis­plays. Geb­hard Debor, man­u­fac­tur­ing man­ag­er at Linde Hydraulics in Aschaf­fen­burg, com­ment­ed: “If we find what we’re look­ing for, we’re ready to talk busi­ness right now.”

Strong Asian pres­ence at EMO Hannover

As the flag­ship fair for its sec­tor of indus­try, EMO Han­nover has a strong inter­na­tion­al pro­file. More than half of all atten­dees came from abroad, split almost even­ly between oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries and over­seas. A 20 per­cent growth in atten­dance from over­seas in com­par­i­son with the 2017 event was par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive. This includ­ed a high per­cent­age of Asian guests, who account­ed for almost one third of vis­i­tors from abroad, with Chi­na, Japan, Tai­wan and India head­ing the rank­ings. “The high­ly inter­na­tion­al make­up of EMO vis­i­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Asia, result­ed in a busy and extreme­ly glob­al atmos­phere at our stand,” said Dr. Ste­fan Brand, CEO of Vollmer Werke in Bib­er­ach. This trend was clear­ly relat­ed to a high­er num­ber of Asian exhibitors at this year’s event, who encour­aged their cus­tomers to vis­it them in Han­nover. Oth­er coun­tries with strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the event includ­ed Italy, Poland, Swe­den, Rus­sia and Turkey.

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automa­tion gath­er­ing momentum

This year’s EMO once again gen­er­at­ed fresh momen­tum for inno­va­tions,” report­ed Lothar Horn, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Paul Horn GmbH in Tübin­gen. As an inno­va­tions plat­form for pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, EMO is expect­ed to chart the trends for the years ahead, and once again the mis­sion was suc­cess­ful. The EMO mot­to “Smart tech­nolo­gies dri­ving tomorrow’s pro­duc­tion” accu­rate­ly reflect­ed the key issues fac­ing the indus­try today. “Our many dis­cus­sions with cus­tomers at EMO 2019 in Han­nover revealed that a focus on the holis­tic process chain, includ­ing dig­i­tal ser­vices, cre­ates the rel­e­vant added val­ue for cus­tomers,” said Chris­t­ian Thönes, Chair­man of the Exec­u­tive Board at Biele­feld-based DMG Mori AG

. This feel­ing was shared across all exhibitor seg­ments. “The pos­i­tive vis­i­tor response to our cloud-based sim­u­la­tion tools and mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem as an Indus­try 4.0 appli­ca­tion was strik­ing,” com­ment­ed Marie-Sophie Maier-Wem­ber, CEO of Haas Schleif­maschi­nen GmbH in Trossin­gen. And the buzz­words of IoT plat­forms, apps, dig­i­tal twins, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), edge and cloud com­put­ing were omnipresent at the fair.

This all served to high­light just how much has changed since the most recent event two years ago. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in Hall 9, the domains of research and prac­tice came togeth­er. This blend of research and indus­try attract­ed large vis­i­tor num­bers from around the world. “We have made many new con­tacts, and the ideas gar­nered from talk­ing to all these peo­ple will hope­ful­ly feed into future research projects,” com­ment­ed Prof. Berend Denke­na, Pres­i­dent of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pro­duc­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (WGP) and head of the Insti­tute for Pro­duc­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Machine Tools (IFW). “One clear con­clu­sion from all this is that dig­i­tal­iza­tion and automa­tion will chart our path into the future, you can see that right here at EMO Han­nover,” he added.

This year’s EMO also fea­tured the first AI appli­ca­tions in the Start-up area and at the stands of the rel­e­vant trail­blaz­ing com­pa­nies. Along with the strong inter­est in AI and machine learn­ing, vis­i­tors’ appetite for future visions was reflect­ed in the accom­pa­ny­ing events and forums, where the top­ics includ­ed not only AI, but also addi­tive process­es, the indus­tri­al inter­net of things (IIoT), 5G and not least OPC UA or umati, the new stan­dard inter­face between machine tools and over­ar­ch­ing IT sys­tems. The stand­out attrac­tion con­sist­ed of the big umati show­case, which includ­ed 110 machines from 70 inter­na­tion­al firms and part­ners, demon­strat­ing for the first time that the uni­ver­sal inter­face between machines and IT sys­tems can func­tion across all prod­uct types. Accord­ing to umati project man­ag­er Dr. Alexan­der Broos, “the response to umati among our part­ners and cus­tomers has been huge. This dis­play at EMO has suc­cess­ful­ly launched us on the mar­ket. Our next com­mis­sion on return­ing home is to deliv­er the OPC UA Com­pan­ion Spec­i­fi­ca­tion at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble date.”

EMO Han­nover 2019 opens win­dow to future

Against all expec­ta­tions, we can wrap up EMO Han­nover 2019 on a pos­i­tive note. The fair is attrac­tive for the entire inter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty and has con­firmed there is still demand for cap­i­tal invest­ment in the mar­ket­place. In spite of all the polit­i­cal tur­moil, this trade fair has revealed that indus­try is active­ly address­ing the chal­lenges of the future and is deter­mined to make its con­tri­bu­tion as a prob­lem solver,” con­clud­ed EMO gen­er­al com­mis­sion­er Carl Mar­tin Welcker.

The next EMO will be staged in Milan from 4 to 9 Octo­ber 2021

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Aussteller- und Besuch­er­stim­men zur EMO Han­nover 2019 (PDF)

 

Categories: 2019, September