At this year's Hannover Messe trade fair, SAP and its partners will demonstrate how they are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their products to help companies achieve new levels of excellence in manufacturing and other industries. I showed it.
The glass bottles on the high-speed filling line made a quiet clanging sound as they ran around the curves of the track. A visitor visiting the SAP booth at an internationally renowned industrial trade fair discovered that an optical sensor with AI support discovered that the bottle was only three-quarters full and drove it off the line to eliminate the defect. I was waiting for the moment to put it in the bay. “This system has a processing capacity of 6,400 books per hour,” Ben Hughes of SAP's Solutions and Innovation Experience team said with a laugh. “In comparison, our partner Krones' original system allows him to fill 50,000 bottles, which is too large for us here at the trade show booth.”
This showcase shows how the cloud-based SAP Digital Manufacturing solution can serve as a process order management system for SAP customers, whether they typically work in single lot sizes or perform serial manufacturing at higher speeds. was demonstrated. For example, a purchase order may originate from an SAP S/4HANA system and end up running in a production environment. “We can see the hardware integration with our own eyes,” Hughes says.
AI was also involved, with cameras capturing the fill level of each bottle. If outside the defined tolerance range, the bottle was rejected and this information was sent to the SAP system. Manufacturers can use this data to calculate the production costs of the system and the profitability of all work centers with AI support. Data from all systems will give experts and management insight into how well the production process is working. This will help you plan better.
Complete portfolio from an industry perspective
Hannover Messe 2024 was held from April 22nd to 26th. Mr. Muhammad Alam was making his first visit in his role as the SAP Product Engineering Board area leader. At the SAP booth with the motto “Unlocking new manufacturing excellence”, he emphasized the importance of his AI as an integral part of his SAP solution. “AI has the opportunity to create fundamentally important value for our customers, especially in the industrial sector.” It has the ability to create resilience from a supply chain perspective, but this will not be possible without the application of AI. It's impossible. ”
SAP exhibited almost its entire portfolio in the industrial sector in Hannover. “SAP uses so-called 'end-to-end scenarios' to do this,” says Georg Kube, head of ecosystems at Industry Data. Reflecting this, the booth was set up according to this logic. A “Designed to Operate” graphic element that maps every step of the manufacturing process showed the corresponding step in the value chain for each station in the booth. “Our solution integrates with the specific processes that manufacturers have,” he said. “They design the product, which is manufactured, purchased by customers, and ultimately used and maintained. We provide integrated solutions for every step of this process.”
work together for success
Darcy McLaren, Global CRO for Digital Supply Chain, acknowledged the challenges facing SAP, its customers, and partners, saying, “We are facing environmental and geopolitical turmoil, and we want to be sustainable. “I think so.” She said her collaboration is the key to achieving these difficult goals, a message echoed in many booth presentations and podium discussions.
For example, experts from BMW, Witte Automotive, and SAP will discuss how the automotive industry network Catena-X is creating standards that enable collaboration, data exchange, and transparency to support decarbonization along the value chain. We discussed what was going on. Catena-X serves as a blueprint for other industrial networks under the Manufacturing-X umbrella, such as Factory-X for suppliers and operators of factory equipment.
Exhibiting at a trade fair booth would not be possible without partners. Partners also play a decisive role in his SAP's competitiveness and future viability. “The partner ecosystem is a key success factor for SAP,” said Andreas Markus Thon, Head of Digital Supply His Chain MEE. “They enrich our suite with their applications and solutions, which are essential to the high quality and successful implementation and use of our solutions.”
Fleet of robots delivers materials
At SAP's “Modular Manufacturing” showcase, visitors can see for themselves examples of successful collaboration with partners. The exhibit demonstrated a fleet of autonomous transport robots that transport various parts of valves from storage locations to assembly stations. Thanks to his AI-embedded fleet control software from SAP partner Kinexon, robots from different manufacturers work together seamlessly and autonomously decide which stations to assemble or disassemble parts, depending on the situation. I was able to decide. This scenario demonstrated that the SAP system can also implement modular production. Modular production is typically used in manufacturing scenarios with many variations and small to medium product volumes. SAP S/4HANA, SAP Extended Warehouse Management, and SAP Digital Manufacturing were deployed here.
The “Industrial Metaverse” showcase also attracted a lot of attention. This puts visitors at the SAP booth in the shoes of system operators, allowing them to virtually inspect systems using VR (virtual reality) glasses, even if manufacturing takes place on the other side of the world. became. The “Injection Molding Machine” scenario, where the machine produces colorful recycled plastic cups for guests at the end of the process, vividly illustrates how planning and manufacturing fit into integrated, agile, make-to-order manufacturing. I showed it.
Other topics at the trade show included potential uses of digital twin solutions such as virtual models and real-time simulations, as well as collaboration between humans and machines. A summary description of all presented scenarios can be found here.
The world's largest industrial trade show
The guiding theme for Hannover Messe 2024 was “Activating Sustainable Industry”. Nearly 4,000 exhibitors from 60 countries presented solutions for high-performance, sustainable industry. As part of the industrial ecosystem, they showed how carbon neutrality can be achieved through electrification, digitalization and automation.
Companies from Germany, China, Turkey, the United States, Italy and France booked the largest exhibition spaces. Approximately 1,600 speakers appeared on 11 conference stages at the venue. This year's partner country was Norway.
With the motto “Unlocking new manufacturing excellence,” SAP will demonstrate how it uses AI to advance manufacturing processes and other solutions at its over 1,000 square meter booth in Hall 15 Did. Visitors to the SAP booth had the opportunity to see: 27 product demonstrations and 9 interactive showcases. More than 25 SAP partners demonstrated the collaboration and various potential applications of their solutions, and the booth featured his 35 presentations by experts and customers.
Photo ©nottebrock.
