From February 28 to March 2, 2023, the first Knowledge Camp of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance took place at the premises of Alliance member MULTIVAC in Wolfertschwenden, near Memmingen in the Allgäu region. This event was exclusively for members and partners. Across three days, valuable implementation knowledge was shared with the attending members and online participants in 11 workshops, over a total duration of 43 hours, and included numerous experiences and suggestions for Industry 4.0 in 19 stage talks.
Slightly more than a hundred participants were on site and about the same number participated live online. The Knowledge Camp was complemented by an exhibition from nine companies. The presentations covered not only technical topics, but also, for example, the internal marketing of digitization initiatives, customer-focused value propositions based on Allianz’s international strategy. The Asset Administration Shell (German “Verwaltungsschale”, an initiative of the German government and industry), naturally took up a lot of space in many workshops. But interfaces and Data Spaces also played an important role.
On site participants including some new members, and they found the opportunity to meet in person particularly important. For Christian Rosskamp from ESPERA-WERKE GmbH, the chance to share experiences on asset administration amongst colleagues was very valuable. Daniel Korte from Phoenix Contact benefited from the implementation experiences around the topic of Open Edge from colleagues at M+M Software. This topic was also prevalent for new member Alfred Peisl from Sulzer GmbH. The software provider, who is active in the automotive industry, does not yet have many projects in the store floor area and appreciates the practical knowledge of the other members in the area of Open Edge Computing. Peisl emphasizes the importance and level of intensity that came from sharing experiences: “We discussed Open Edge for over an hour, some of it controversial!”
The Knowledge Camp also included current developments from the industry scene. For example, Thomas Neumann from M+M Software highlighted the discussions around the planned “Manufacturing X” platform for SMEs and is sure that the alliance will contribute to this in the future. International participants such as Tad Konoike of Konoike Transport appreciated the dialog about new business ideas. Finally, Bastian Schmick from ifm electronic GmbH thinks that the Knowledge Camp could be the tool for the Alliance to shape the process of collaboration, prototypical implementation and bringing it back to the Alliance in the future. Overall, Sebastian Schulz of soffico GmbH thinks that the Knowledge Camp is a “wonderful format to get a lot into the exchange. And the bigger the alliance gets, the more important this format is to get people in touch with each other.”
Attendees who attended on site were universally positive about the format and content of the event, and also supported the idea of repeating it once or twice a year. MULTIVAC proved to be the perfect host at this first Knowledge Camp and also ensured that the social setting was right with the inclusion of two dinners.