Roll-out of fourth generation industry concept

London - ‘Integrated industry’ has been dubbed the fourth industrial revolution, following on from the steam engine, mass production and automation.

The advanced integration concept is the motto for this year’s Hannover Messe, which organisers bill as the world’s largest and most important industrial technology fair.

The theme, which has been chosen by major exhibitors, will focus on the integration of IT into activities and operations across all industry sectors, explained Oliver Friese, vice president of Hannover Messe.

IT-based integration is “driving alliances between companies in very different markets, who traditionally have had very little to do with one another or even, perhaps, are competitors,” Friese said at an 8 Jan press conference in London.

On another level, Friese said the ‘integrated’ concept also encompassed the increasing development of components that enable a machine to send out real-time data about its performance and maintenance status across an organisation.

The concept was further explained by Dr. Jochen Köckler, a member of the Deutsche Messe board of management.

“Machines, industrial equipment, work pieces and system components will soon be capable of exchanging data in real-time. This will significantly boost efficiency, safety and resource sustainability in production and logistics,” he ssid in a press statement.

At the same time, new forms of cooperation and collaboration are opening up fresh opportunities for productivity-based economic growth, Köckler said.

“Enabling people in production facilities and beyond to collaborate with each other is the first step along the way to integration. Increasingly, companies from very different industries will enter into partnerships with one another, thereby opening up previously undreamt-of horizons,” he said.

In this sense, ‘Integrated Industry’, he concluded, “could be defined in terms of technical and electronic integration, but also in terms of the challenge faced by all areas of industry as they seek to cooperate across corporate and sector boundaries. Integration would shorten communication channels and make collaboration more efficient.”