The biggest stage for Intelligent Industry just got bigger

This year, Hannover Messe 2023 has amplified and accelerated the best of industry innovation and success stories, from engineering, manufacturing, supply networks, logistics, 5G, to automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital twins, metaverse, and hydrogen fuel cells – to name a few.

Intelligent Industry amplified

“Booth” is the wrong word in my opinion for what the Capgemini team built in Hall 15 – it’s the home of Intelligent Industry, our innovation launch pad!

With some 50+ on-stand presentations from our clients, partners, and experts, there’s a lot of inspiration to take away and, frankly, too much to feedback and reflect on here. So, I’ll give my top 3 highlights from the stage:

Andrew Hawthorn, Chief Architect, Capgemini Engineering UK Intelligence Industry, was on stage discussing High Integrity Systems, their application and how, within all industries, a drive towards more automation is making businesses completely reliant on software. What struck me is that high-integrity/safety critical systems are in every aspect of our daily lives: planes, trains, automobiles, energy, healthcare and much more. How we scale these and add more intelligence and agility whilst being safe and compliant is a challenge that I think we have the “secret sauce” for.

Quality is key for L’Oreal’s Olivier Chapel (right). The brand image across their range must always be perfect – as consumers, we expect it.  Hugo Cascarigny (left) from Capgemini Engineering France has been working with L’Oreal on an elegant in-line solution for removing sub-standard bottles prior to filling. Using Computer Vision (CV) and AI to inspect every bottle on the production line, comparing them to a standardised model and then automatically removing defective items without slowing the line speed. In fact, the line goes faster. There’s more output and a lot less product wastage and cleaning operations. The impressive part is the creativity and working culture in the combined team to work with the line operators to make this happen and create a “pull” for more of these systems onto other lines.

We should stop using the words “5G enabled”, it sounds like it’s optional! Schneider-Electric’s Marc Lafont and Qualcomm’s Sebastiano di Filippo showed us, on our stage, that 5G is necessary for remote hoisting/craning operations in ports and other large-scale situations where many complex assets and real-time high-precision actions are needed to work together. Practically, you can eliminate long runs of cabling susceptible to breakage and put more intelligence on these systems with Mobile Edge Compute connected through low latency 5G. Anastasia Karatrantou and Monika Gupta spoke passionately on this subject, stating “now is the time to make 5G the driver for new product and systems innovation”.

Net Zero manufacturing is a “village” – we’ve got to work together

Thirty leading industry executives and partners joined us for a networking lunch on the 9th floor Cosmopolitan restaurant overlooking the show. This was hosted by Cyril Garcia, Pierre Bagnon, Holger Lips, and key speaker Eryn Devola, Vice President of Sustainability Siemens Digital Industries. The core topics discussed were the industrial journey to Net-Zero in the manufacturing supply network and how we can empower existing, new, and returning talent to change the world around us.

The key message from Eryn and Cyril: “We are more than just competing organisations – we are a village, a community that can accelerate manufacturing transition and the realisation of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) by working together and sharing best practices.”

Pierre Bagnon touched on the work we are doing with the World Economic Forum. This year, we launched a co-paper “The “No-Excuse” Framework to Accelerate the Path to Net-Zero Manufacturing and Value Chains” with WEF, Rockwell Automation and Siemens Digital Industries.

For me, the manufacturing sector will continue to grow, and there will be ever increasing demand for new “intelligent” products and capabilities as we transition to an electric-alternative fuelled world where climate consciousness and the cost of living are key buying factors alongside economics and profitability. Alongside this, we must deeply question our choices of design, materials, locations of processing, and the distances where parts and goods move, and how we work together in a digital, physical, and commercial sense. This will create more complexity in planning, but we have the processes, and technology to manage these questions. However, we must have access to the right data.

Our demonstrations connect clients, partners, and our experts together

Back at the Intelligent Industry launch pad, our experts had created an immersive digital and physical walk through to demonstrate the end-to-end value stream transformation that only we can envision and deliver. From exploring the Industrial Metaverse to Intelligent Products and Services, Software-Driven Transformation, Smart Plant (IT-OT), and Intelligent Supply Chain – all powered by Digital Continuity and Insights for Intelligent Industry.

Many hundreds of guests were immersed and entertained by our demo team with high-level and deep technical discussions taking place across the area. The really impressive part was that from Monday morning at 9am when the show opened, it was packed and the energy and willingness to share and collaborate was palpable.

Looking to next year

Hannover Messe is a global event; its relevance for engineering, manufacturing, energy, and mobility transition is going to become even more important over the few years. If you are from these industries or are looking at cross-sector transformation, like the impact of hydrogen, this is the place to come and understand the possibilities, the “toolkits” and really see how they need to be connected through our Intelligent Industry capabilities.

Our people are Intelligent Industry

Our launch pad was brought to life by an amazing Capgemini team led by Sascha Kaus, Sandra Frenzel, Denis Fortmann, Sabine Reuss and Tammo Schwindt, with international support from across Europe, India, and North America. There is an army of people alongside the organising team and without them, this event just wouldn’t function as smoothly. Congratulations to the team – you have made this event a benchmark moment for Intelligent Industry globally!

Danke schön Hannover Messe 2023, bis nächste mal!