The economic conditions for the trade fair could hardly be better. "There is strong investment in Germany and Europe," reports Schäfer. Growth of 6.8 and 5.6 percent respectively is expected in 2018. Key customer groups such as the manufacture of metal products, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering are leading the way. "It is precisely from these sectors that the METAV visitors come, who want to get their bearings at the trade fair for their purchasing decisions in the coming weeks and months," says Schäfer.

The focus of the METAV is on the perennial theme of Industry 4.0, which runs through the exhibitors' presentations, the numerous special shows, the stand for recruiting young talent and the many supporting events ranging from 3D printing to intelligent clamping technology.

Industry project "Connectivity for Industry 4.0" takes giant strides forward
The VDW is therefore using the trade fair as a platform to present the progress of the industry initiative for Industry 4.0. It was launched in September last year. The aim is to develop a standard and implement it in software in order to be able to connect a wide variety of machine control systems to higher-level IT systems using a common interface. OPC UA was chosen as the standardized language, which is currently spreading rapidly, enables the specification of parameters in a predefined structure and provides numerous tested sample implementations on so-called OPC servers.

"The greatest success of our industry initiative so far has undoubtedly been that we have succeeded in establishing a cooperation between well-known machine tool manufacturers in which they all pull together. Now, moreover, all the major control manufacturers from Beckhoff to Bosch Rexroth, Fanuc, Heidenhain and Siemens have pledged their support," explained Dr. Heinz-Jürgen Prokop, Chairman of the VDW, at the METAV press conference. The strategic partnership with the suppliers of CNC control systems ensures that the interface will be integrated into future control system versions and thus be openly available on the market. According to Prokop, this means that nothing stands in the way of widespread use and benefits for small and medium-sized companies in particular.

Why is the machine tool industry working on this topic? Manufacturers will not be able to avoid the digital transformation. According to a VDMA study on the platform economy, experts predict that digital platforms will play an increasingly important role in new business models. This gives machine manufacturers the opportunity to determine what happens in the platform economy themselves with smart business ideas. With an interface standard that will significantly simplify digitalization and make it cheaper, SMEs will also be able to exploit the potential of such platforms more easily.

Customers expect open interfaces
"It is obvious that companies cannot ignore this trend if they want to remain competitive in the future," says Prokop. However, networking in the sense of Industry 4.0 will not succeed if companies set out on their own. Medium-sized companies are simply overwhelmed here. Even large and largest companies will fail in the long term if they only rely on proprietary, closed ecosystems. After all, customers rightly expect open interfaces and standardized specifications that allow machines to be integrated into existing infrastructures and ecosystems as required.

Since the VDW made the initiative public, Chiron, DMG Mori, Emag, Grob, Heller, Liebherr-Verzahntechnik, Trumpf and the United Grinding Group have been working together in the core team. They all contribute resources in the form of personnel and test systems. The project team therefore covers a representative cross-section of metal cutting and sheet metal processing. Since mid-November 2017, the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW) at the University of Stuttgart has also been a cooperation partner of the VDW initiative.

International coordination to ensure broad use of the interface
In addition, networking is taking place across industries, for example with robotics and rubber and plastics machinery, as well as internationally with the USA, Japan and, in the near future, China. All three countries are equally interested in a common standard. The USA, for its part, has already developed MTConnect for the status monitoring of production plants. "Useful functions and basic approaches should be adopted, because we don't have to reinvent the wheel," says Prokop. As a further step towards internationalization, the VDW industry initiative wants to form a joint working group with the OPC Foundation in order to achieve a so-called Companion Secification. This is an internationally recognized standard for the planned interface. This is being worked on intensively.

"We have created all the prerequisites for the planned interface standard to be widely used," concludes Prokop. Now it is time to continue working quickly and present concrete modules. A first sample implementation will soon be realized by the partner ISW. And in the fall, the first implementations by control manufacturers for data exchange on machine tools will be presented.