Plattform Industrie 4.0 and CESMII – The Smart Manufacturing Institute are working together to drive the digital transformation of manufacturing. Key aims are to promote interoperability and a shared set of skills and competencies. At the Hannover Messe 2021 they present first results of their cooperation.
Germany and the United States are among the top five manufacturing countries in the world. [1] The two countries’ manufacturers share an interconnected network of
facilities and suppliers, including many small and medium-sized enterprises. Plattform Industrie 4.0 (Germany) and CESMII (US) are announcing their partnership to address similar challenges and needs related to Industrie 4.0 / Smart Manufacturing. For both manufacturing economies to compete, they need international collaboration to achieve major tasks like semantic interoperability, create data sharing platforms, develop workforce skills, and foster sustainable production.
Platform Industrie 4.0 promotes the development of Industrie 4.0 in Germany by developing pre-competitive concepts, recommendations and use cases for practical application. CESMII promotes Smart Manufacturing in the US by supporting precompetitive research and development, providing tools and test bed for new technology as public-private partnerships, and creating content for educating a next generation of smart manufacturers.
“Production is globally connected, and manufacturers are in digital transformation worldwide. Whereas digitalization provides great potentials like higher resilience, flexibility, and efficiency, we need to shape digital ecosystems globally and learn together to unfold these potentials. We highly appreciate the ongoing working relationship with CESMII and are happy to have CESMII on stage of the Hannover Messe to jointly discuss the digitalization of industry”, says Thomas Hahn, member of the Steering Committee of Plattform Industrie 4.0.
Plattform Industrie 4.0 and CESMII at the Hannover Messe 2021
Plattform Industrie 4.0 is particularly honored that CESMII accepted the invitation to their panel Shaping digital ecosystems globally at the Hannover Messe on Wednesday April 14th, which will be live streamed on the Intelligent Production Channel. The Hannover Messe 2021 provides an excellent opportunity to present first results of the cooperation. At Plattform Industrie 4.0’s digital booth, a video demonstrator on interoperability will be shown (via LNI 4.0) and a joint position paper discussing upskilling and ecological sustainability will be published.
Collaboration in two core areas: technology standardization and workforce skills
Technology standardization is critical to ensure that pre-competitive technology in smart manufacturing is interoperable across different IT/OT systems. Developing workforce competencies and skills is essential to continue the path of innovation and to drive adoption. These are highly complementary efforts that will help the US and Germany to ensure these systems work well based on common standards that are mutually beneficial.
John Dyck, CEO of CESMII, appreciates the joint progress since June 2020: “Both sides have invested significant time to understand each other’s approaches and national context. We have now reached a point where we can start defining concrete activities. It is important to us that our efforts also respond to the needs of small and medium-sized companies, especially to recover from Covid-19 and to create new jobs in the future. Plattform Industrie 4.0 and CESMII also see great potential in the digital transformation of manufacturing to enhance ecological sustainability as we point out in our joint position paper.”