The Hannover Messe opened its doors on Monday. T-Systems will be represented at several partner stands – Gaia-X, Industry 4.0 and umati. The focus is on two topics: Data Spaces and the Metaverse. CTO Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic visited the trade fair and spoke to representatives from politics and the press.
T-Systems at the Hannover Messe
The Hannover Messe opened its doors on Monday. Around 4,000 exhibitors from 150 countries are presenting their solutions. The national sponsor is Canada. This year's focus is on artificial intelligence and sustainable technologies such as hydrogen. T-Systems will be represented at several partner stands – Gaia-X, Industry 4.0 and umati. The focus will be on two topics: Data Spaces and the Metaverse.
Our CTO Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic visited the stand, spoke to a state secretary and journalists from Handelsblatt, FAZ and VDI-Nachrichten.
Training for sprayers
Rafaela Sieber presented the Immersive Paint Booth Training. Using virtual reality goggles and a spray gun, trainees practice painting car parts. Even though car bodies are painted fully automatically in the industry, the use of the spray gun is mandatory during training. This solution is used at Mercedes-Benz in Leinfelden-Echterdingen. The highlight: the simulation also shows if too little paint is applied. In the real world, trainees can recognize too much paint from paint noses, but too little paint is very difficult to detect.
CO2 footprint of a metal hook
T-Systems is represented at the umati stand with dataspaces in which information from machines from four continents is exchanged. umati is an initiative for a standard for machine data. The German Engineering Federation (VDMA) supports this initiative. A machine in Germany located Darmstadt produces the metal hook in the picture. The machine produces 0.248 kilograms of CO2 equivalents per kilowatt hour of machine operation per hook. This value is recorded in a digital product passport. The data for this is shared by a T-Systems dataspace that follows the specifications of Manufacturing-X. Other machines from Asia, Brazil, Spain and the USA provide similar data for other products.
Image 2. CO2 footprint of a metal hook
Dataspace for AI and robots
The RoX (Robotics X) project is a research project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK). The aim is to build a digital ecosystem that enables the use of AI-based robot solutions in various applications and industries. T-Systems is providing the dataspace. It connects the application layer with the platform layer. Felix Weidinger (VDMA), Christoph Schlueter Langdon (T-Systems), Lenny Hofmann (T-Systems) and Lukas Sohlbach (VDMA) present the architecture and the progress of the project at the RoX stand. The project runs until the beginning of 2027.
Supply chain for Ford on three levels
At the Industry 4.0 stand of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, the focus was also on the example of a product carbon footprint. For example, Ford recorded the CO2 footprint of an electronic component from the supplier Flex. The memory manufacturer Micron in turn supplies Flex. With Catena-X, suppliers share information about the carbon footprint of their contribution to the Ford vehicle.
“Simple, easy, light”
At the Industry 4.0 stage, the Product Carbon Footprint partners presented the solution for Ford's supply chain. Christopher Schlueter Langdon (center) made it clear: dataspaces must be simple. Easy to use for the user, easy to support for the IT department and simply secure.
Image 5. Nadine Kanja from SAP, Christoph Schlueter Langdon, Florian Ansgar Jaeger from Siemens
Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic talks about AI
Our CTO Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic was also at the Hannover Messe. Among other things, she took part in the Leaders' Dialogue. This year's event was all about a new era – the data-driven industry. High-ranking representatives from politics, business and science discussed how data and digital technologies are changing industrial value creation networks and thus becoming a key factor for competitiveness and innovation. The roundtable discussion focused on the question: Can Europe keep up in the race for industrial AI?
Our CTO on Super Cloud and Gaia-X
Together with Udo Philipp, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK), Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic also discussed current topics such as Europe's path to cloud sovereignty at the BMWK stand. The EU project “8ra” promises a breakthrough: twelve EU states and around 150 partners are working on a networked cloud edge infrastructure that aims to restore Europe's digital sovereignty. Knackfuß-Nikolic also spoke about the super cloud in interviews with Handelsblatt, FAZ and VDI-Nachrichten. The German Engineering Federation (VDMA) was also involved in the last two talks. The topic of Gaia-X was also on the agenda here.
Ferri's essay in the book Traumfabriken
The book Traumfabriken (Dream Factories) was also presented at the Hannover Messe. Ferri has written an essay entitled “AI Dream Factories: From Myth to Industrial Reality”. Industrial production is at a turning point: digitalization and artificial intelligence are not only changing processes, but entire business models. The combination of smart technology with sustainable architecture and human creativity is opening up completely new possibilities. But what will the factory of the future look like? What role does AI play in modern production facilities? And how can Europe secure its digital sovereignty? Ferri sheds light on these and other questions in his essay.
