Dr. Frank Melzer has been a member of the Management Board of Festo AG & Co. KG since 1 October 2017. Dr. Melzer, who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering, is responsible for Product and Technology Management, which includes the Digital Business and Corporate Research and Innovation divisions.

"I am looking forward to taking over the chairmanship and would like to thank Mr. Leukert for his successful work over the past two years. He has led the steering committee with dedication and made a significant contribution to the success of the platform, particularly through the promotion and implementation of innovative test centers for companies," said Dr. Frank Melzer. "During my term of office, I would like to focus on technology development. In particular, the further development of decentralized, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, which provide us with excellent tools for optimizing industrial production processes in the future. Another focus will be the qualification and further training of skilled workers. After all, digitalization is driving skills change in our society faster than any industrial change before."

Festo has been involved in the research advisory board and several working groups since the Industry 4.0 platform was founded. The experts are primarily involved in the topics of reference architectures, standards, security of networked systems and qualification.

Administration shell for Industry 4.0

Among others, Dr Michael Hoffmeister, Executive Expert in the Digital Business division at Festo, was significantly involved in the concept of the administration shell in the "Reference architectures, standards and standardization" working group of the Industry 4.0 platform. The paper "Details of the Administration Shell" was published at the SPS IPC Drives trade fair in Nuremberg at the end of November. The Administration Shell is so important for Industry 4.0 because it abstracts the devices and other assets and enables their data and other functionalities to be accessed in a standardized and controlled manner. An asset can be a single sensor or an entire production line. The asset administration shell describes the asset using submodels that complement each other. Each sub-model represents a specific aspect, such as documentation or technical data.

The Industry 4.0 platform

The Industry 4.0 platform is the central network in Germany for advancing the digital transformation in production. More than 300 players from over 150 organizations are actively involved in the platform, working shoulder to shoulder with politics, business, science, trade unions and associations. As one of the largest international and national networks, the platform supports German companies - especially SMEs - in implementing Industry 4.0, in particular by making existing examples of Industry 4.0 practice known to companies and disseminating them. It also provides important impetus with concrete recommendations for action and refers to support services and test environments. The platform's numerous international collaborations underline its strong role in the international discussions surrounding the topic of Industry 4.0.

Digital summit

Once a year, the Digital Summit of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) is dedicated to ideas, tasks and concepts to strengthen Germany as a location for digital transformation. The theme of this year's summit on December 3 and 4 in Nuremberg was "Artificial intelligence - a key to growth and prosperity". Representatives from politics, business, science and academia discussed the challenges and opportunities of digitalization. Until 2017, the Digital Summit was still called the National IT Summit. The new title reflects the fact that digitalization affects both providers and users, from Industry 4.0 to the cultural and creative industries.