OI4 Alliance at Hannover Messe 2024

Alliance presents cross-industry and cross-tech­nology imple­men­ta­tion projects to enhance inter­op­er­ability in compli­ance with existing and forth­coming regu­la­tory require­ments.  

Reinach, Switzer­land, March 27, 2024 – The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance will take place once again at the Hannover Messe (exhi­bi­tion hall) from April 22 to 26 in Hall 15, Stand E40 –  marking five years since its estab­lish­ment at this very event. Projects under­taken by the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance aim to further enhance inter­op­er­ability among leading compa­nies from various sectors, by lever­aging existing and future regu­la­tions to increase economic effi­ciency. One of the main areas of focus remains the Digital Twin, which addresses the way indus­trial compa­nies are preparing for upcoming EU regu­la­tions such as the Digital Product Pass­port and the Cyber Resilience Act at a tech­no­log­ical level.   

To make the Digital Twin concept expe­ri­en­tial, the “Follow The Digital Twin” commu­nity activity and compe­ti­tion – a major success at SPS 2023 in Nurem­berg – will take place again at Hannover Messe. With even more partic­i­pants, the event will be more inter­op­er­able through a plat­form tran­si­tion. The aim of the compe­ti­tion is to give all trade fair visi­tors the oppor­tu­nity to learn about the concept of the Digital Twin, expe­ri­ence it in a playful manner, and dispel concerns about its perceived complexity, with partic­i­pating orga­ni­za­tions including existing member firms, partner orga­ni­za­tions, and end users.  

QR codes at exhibitor stands will mark the Digital Twin of a device, which visi­tors will be able to scan to open a corre­sponding web app containing addi­tional infor­ma­tion. Partic­i­pants who iden­tify and scan the Digital Twins will be entered into a prize draw at the Alliance stand. Prod­ucts and solu­tions from member compa­nies such as AS-Schneider, Concept Reply, Dunker­mo­toren, Hilscher, KUKA and their subsidiaries Device Insight and Kübler, will also be show­cased at the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance stand.  

The theme of the second event focuses on the Digital Product Pass­port (DPP), an EU initia­tive under the code­sign for the Sustain­able Prod­ucts Regu­la­tion (ESPR) direc­tive. The DPP, currently being defined by the Euro­pean stan­dard­iza­tion orga­ni­za­tion CEN/CENELC, is set to become manda­tory for certain product groups – such as elec­tric car batteries – starting in 2026. To prag­mat­i­cally address this regu­la­tory chal­lenge, the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance estab­lished a cross-working-group project last year, focusing not only on tech­nical ground­work but also on how manu­fac­turing compa­nies can turn regu­la­tory require­ments into oppor­tu­ni­ties. Visi­tors to the stand will receive prac­tical insights on how to imple­ment product flow and end-to-end life­cycle manage­ment with DPP, demon­strated by using a bicycle produc­tion example.  

“The imple­men­ta­tion of this new direc­tive neces­si­tates the delivery of accu­rate, up-to-date data in the correct format from various systems to the right desti­na­tion, and a highly complex and unique process for each company,” explains Rüdiger Fritz, Director of Product Manage­ment at SAP and one of the most active contrib­u­tors to the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance. “We are exploring effi­cient pattern solu­tions to tackle this complexity, and enabling compa­nies to derive maximum benefit for their prod­ucts or under­lying busi­ness processes during imple­men­ta­tion. For instance, by iden­ti­fying syner­gies and creating added value – such as process opti­miza­tions or new busi­ness models – along­side the manda­tory exer­cise of DPP.”  

In addi­tion to the Digital Twin and DPP, Vulner­a­bility Manage­ment under the upcoming Euro­pean Union Cyber Resilience Act [1] is also a topic for the Alliance at Hannover Messe. This act aims to regu­late “hori­zontal cyber­se­cu­rity require­ments for prod­ucts with digital elements”. In this context, the BSI has issued tech­nical guide­lines (TR-03183, and TR-03183–2) [2] outlining the cyber­se­cu­rity resilience require­ments for manu­fac­turers and prod­ucts, including formal and tech­nical spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the Soft­ware Bill of Mate­rials (SBOM). Thus far, Vulner­a­bility Manage­ment, espe­cially across devices, has been mini­mally auto­mated.  

Further­more, industry initia­tives such as Manufacturing‑X and Factory‑X, as well as Remote Device Manage­ment and Instru­men­ta­tion Manage­ment in cross-manu­fac­turer envi­ron­ments, will also be impor­tant topics for the Alliance at this year’s Hannover Messe.  

At Hannover Messe 2024, Ekrem Yigit­doel, Managing Director of the Alliance and Imple­men­ta­tion GmbH of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance, Ricardo Dunkel, Tech­nical Director of the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance, and exec­u­tives from partic­i­pating member compa­nies, will be avail­able for inter­views. 

Sources:  

[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/cyber-resilience-act  

[2] https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Publikationen/TechnischeRichtlinien/TR03183/BSI-TR-03183–2.html  

About the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance   

The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance oper­ates as a part­ner­ship of leading industry compa­nies prag­mat­i­cally engaged in the imple­men­ta­tion of multi-vendor Industry 4.0 solu­tions and services for manu­fac­turing plants and auto­mated ware­houses. In industry and tech­nology working groups, industry experts develop use cases and imple­ment them tech­ni­cally based on the OI4 refer­ence archi­tec­ture. These solu­tions, along with imple­men­ta­tion guides, are shared in the commu­nity and made avail­able outside of the Alliance.  

For more infor­ma­tion, visit https://www.openindustry4.com/