Arena of Integration 2020: Networking is realized intelligently

The integrative theme park “Arena of Integration” (AoI) goes into the next round. This year, for the second time, the competence network will flank the proven trade fair duo Motek – International Trade Fair for Production and Assembly Automation – and Bondexpo – International Trade Fair for Adhesive Technologies. From 05. to 08 October 2020, the participants of the AoI will build on the promising beginning and usefully continue what has been started.

A good 35 company representatives kicked off this year’s Arena of Integration – AoI for short – on Wednesday in Stuttgart at the kick-off meeting together with the trade fair company P.E. Schall and the Mechatronics Baden-Württemberg state network. At Motek/Bondexpo in early October 2020, the players want to continue what was successfully started in 2019: to further advance networking in industrial manufacturing and to demonstrate Industry 4.0 solutions to customers in a practical way.

The participants of the first AoI in fall 2019 had impressively and with great commitment shown where the journey is heading for industrial processes: Digitization requires end-to-end networking, holistic engineering and cooperative project implementation. With the AoI, all participating partners have created a unique platform for linking aspects of Industrie 4.0 with real business models. With their respective collaborations, they have proven that they have reliable solutions that can be applied in practice.

Together with the organizers, the AoI participants now want to expand the “Automation Intelligence To Go” concept and raise its profile even further, make it even more tangible for customers and develop marketing strategies. They emphasize the need to create practicable solutions from diverse products and different know-how, from which concrete business models can emerge and value added can be generated. The players in the manufacturing industry want and need to be at the forefront of the market – which is favored by simple and transparent action interfaces between them. In this way, new solutions can be developed and orders won in collaborative implementation.

The world’s leading trade fair Motek with the claim “Smart Solutions for Production and Assembly”, located in the heart of the SME sector, is exactly the right place to present networked Industry 4.0 in a practical, hands-on way. Here, AoI is the forward-looking approach in the right place at the right time. The customer can formulate his specific problem and directly find an answer and a viable solution. Such a networked project implementation for everyday practice cannot be experienced at any other trade fair. This networking is the royal road to innovation success – the participants of AoI 2019 already agreed on this; as cooperating partners, they were able to show their overall competence and initiate new partnerships.

In the end, what counts is success – both for the customer who attends the AoI and presents his industrial problem, and for the cooperating AoI participants. With this concept, the organizers are offering trade visitors the chance to obtain compact information on a wide variety of aspects of digitization. The foreign delegations that visited the Arena of Integration in 2019 were also impressed by being able to take away answers to how Industry 4.0 actually works in practice right away: “Automation Intelligence To Go!”

“We see huge potential for 2020 if we highlight the benefits of AoI even more and focus on integration significantly,” Thillo Heffner noted. The CEO of the startup Efficiency Systems in Überlingen affirms that the AoI with its use cases offers an excellent opportunity, especially for small companies, to transport their story to the customer in the community network.

“This concept of the Arena of Integration is a very important platform,” stated Dipl.-Wirtschaftsing. Werner Morgenthaler from the IHK Nordschwarzwald in Pforzheim and underlined the role of the IHK as a multiplier. Jürgen Raizner, head of the Steinbeis Transfer Center East-West Cooperation in Deggingen, also recommended himself as an amplifier and mediator of AoI interested parties and AoI projects. He suggested linking the concept of AoI internationally and presenting the AoI model with its concrete solution examples abroad as well.

At the previous year’s trade fair, the AoI, with its 29 practical use cases, became a milestone that was noticed by all, as the participating companies were able to present networked Industry 4.0 solutions in close cooperation in a practical, hands-on way. AoI participants will now move on to preparing the collaborations and use cases that will be on display at Motek/Bondexpo in early October.