“Data is the new oil” is a much-cited saying that has been around the world since 2017. However, as digitization progresses, this metaphor is filled with life, visible to everyone.
After all, practically everywhere, as much data as possible is collected from everything and everyone in order to optimize things and, above all, to make a profit from them. Now the German industry also wants to use the value of data and earn money with it. Manufacturing X is the name of the corresponding project, which this year is one of the main themes of the world‘s largest industrial show, the Hannover Messe.
“It’s about setting up a common data room that can be used by all companies, from large industry to medium-sized companies, to exchange data on an equal footing,” explains Gunther Kegel, President of the Association of the Electrical and Digital Industry (ZVEI) and CEO of Pepperl +Fuchs from Mannheim, a manufacturer of industrial automation technology. “It’s like a kind of Amazon for industrial data.”
With Manufacturing X, companies offer certain data that can then be accessed by other companies for a fee, like in an app store. This data exchange and transfer should make it possible to optimize developments and processes across industries and companies and thus to produce much more efficiently and cost-effectively – so that Germany as an industrial location continues to have a future in international competition.
“In the future, we will only get better beyond company boundaries,” predicts Tanja Rückert, the managing director and head of digital at Bosch. Because many companies have long since exhausted the obvious potential for efficiency. “That’s why data sharing is so important in the future.”
What companies want to store with Manufacturing X are, for example, digital data sheets for products, but also information on the upstream supply chains and the ecological footprint, these are digital nameplates for complete machines through to construction plans. The respective providers remain the owners of the data.
Joint project Manufacturing X
“Companies do not hand over their data to a gigantic data vacuum cleaner, which then freely disposes of it, but decides how it is to be used,” explains expert Kegel, who also expects new data-driven business models from the project. “Many of them have so far failed due to the astronomical costs of the necessary data integration projects.” But that will no longer be the case in the future.
If it is now a simple exchange, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in industrial production can also be promoted. “A program like ChatGPT feeds its knowledge from the Internet and thus from a freely accessible source. But that doesn’t exist in industry,” says Peter Weckesser, Digital Head of Schneider Electric. However, Manufacturing X can provide access to the necessary data about products and productions. “Then AI will also scale quickly.”
Manufacturing X is being set up as a joint project by the electrical engineering association ZVEI, the Association of German Mechanical and Plant Engineering (VDMA) and the digital association Bitkom. “Individual companies can neither afford nor pay for the development of such a system,” explains Hartmut Rauen, Deputy General Manager of the VDMA. In addition, the goal is a uniform solution with uniform interfaces for everyone involved.
“Manufacturing X should enable medium-sized companies to be fully integrated into the digital transformation,” says Rauen. Because many medium-sized companies are still struggling with digitization.
“At the same time, it is clear that business relationships and models will continue to change.” With Manufacturing X, a secure and trusting environment should now be created.
Federal government participates in Manufacturing X
The project partners estimate a three-digit million amount for the construction of this data room, above all for the digital infrastructure, the software and the precautions for data security. The majority of this is financed by the industry itself.
But the federal government will also contribute with funding: According to information from the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWK), 150 million euros will soon be made available from the federal budget for the “digitization of the supply chains in industry”. “Minister Habeck is enthusiastic and passionate about this project,” says Bernhard Kluttig, head of industrial policy at the BMWK, and calls the 150 million “a refreshing sum”.
Models for Manufacturing X are on the one hand the European initiative Gaia X and on the other hand Catena X, the association of the automotive industry. The system connects manufacturers with suppliers and service providers across the entire supply chain. Manufacturing X should now be the increase of this by integrating many industries from mechanical engineering and the electrical industry to chemicals and pharmaceuticals to food manufacturers and the automotive industry.
Manufacturing X should then start before the summer. From then on it depends on the company. The biggest hurdle could be the skepticism of small companies and their reservations when it comes to disclosing data. “What we need now is something completely analog,” says Bosch CEO Rückert. “A trusting cooperation.”
And that internationally. Because Manufacturing X should not be a purely German topic. Countries like France, Italy or the Netherlands are already in the starting blocks to connect their industry. This was announced and assured by the responsible ministers at the Hanover Fair. And that’s not all. “In the next step, we have to think globally,” demands Schneider manager Weckesser.
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