Germany's leading trade fair for smart and digital automation is changing its name for its 30th edition. SPS IPC Drives, which started out as SPS/PC/Drives in Sindelfingen in 1990, is now SPS 2019, and from 26 to 28 November 2019, everything at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre will revolve around „Smart Production Solutions“.
„We are proud to have provided valuable impetus to industrial production with SPS for decades. With our name change and the strategic ideas behind it, we will continue to do so in the future,“ is Martin Roschkowski, Managing Director of organiser Mesago Messe Frankfurt, is convinced by the new trade fair title. With the new name Mesago According to the company's own information, this is due to the fact that automation technology functions such as control, drive and visualisation are increasingly being implemented via software function blocks and less and less on the hardware side.
SPS 2019 is set to match the high visitor and exhibitor levels of the previous year. 1,631 exhibitors had set up their stands in the 17 exhibition halls last year. Two thirds of the exhibitors came from Germany. Locals also dominated the visitor numbers. Of the 65,700 visitors, only a good quarter travelled from abroad. Both the Visitor and exhibitor numbers were slightly lower in 2018 than in 2017, but higher than in 2016.
The topic of „Industry 4.0“ remains omnipresent
As in previous years, this year's theme will once again be „Industry 4.0“ will be omnipresent. Cloud and big data technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital twins and many other functions from the world of IT are increasingly finding their way into Automation applications. This development is reflected, among other things, in the growth of the „Software and IT in Manufacturing“ exhibition area, which already occupied space in Hall 5 in addition to its traditional Hall 6 last year.
The „Automation Hackathon“ will take a break this year and will not be offered again until 2020. Mesago cites the intensive planning preparation required as the reason for this. Last year, seven start-ups had the opportunity to develop new business models for seven selected companies in the automation industry - Balluff, Bosch Rexroth, Phoenix Contact, Sick, Siemens, Turck and Wago - in just 48 hours. This resulted in exciting projects, according to Mesago. During the trade fair, they were honoured by an expert jury.
[infotext icon]Information on all exhibitors and further information on SPS 2019 can be found on the Homepage of the event.
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