Beckhoff Automation was among the booths Merkel visited. Among the delegation accompanying Chancellor Merkel was Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, this year’s official partner country of Hannover Messe, the world’s largest industrial fair. At the Beckhoff booth, Managing Director Hans Beckhoff presented the latest technology and business updates from his company as well as the core PC-based solutions available to implement Industry 4.0 concepts.
Angela Merkel was also accompanied by Johanna Wanka, German Federal Minister of Education and Research; Stephan Weil, Prime Minister of the German state of Lower Saxony, along with 50 more guests and about 100 journalists. Hans Beckhoff and roughly 200 Beckhoff employees welcomed the illustrious delegation. After a short presentation on his company, Hans Beckhoff explained the components of his company’s control and drive technology, using trade show demo concepts made by his company as examples. With innovative systems such as PC-based control and EtherCAT, the automation company provides the underlying technologies for “Integrated Industry”, the motto of this year’s Hannover Messe. Beckhoff Automation covers this subject in great detail in its booth with the special “Industry 4.0 Forum”, where demonstrations show that PC-based control already delivers the core technologies, functions and services needed to implement the Smart Factory today.
At the end of his presentation, Hans Beckhoff also mentioned the status of the “ScAut” research project, which the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has named a “Leading-Edge Cluster” in the “it’s OWL” (Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe) technology network. As the consortium manager, Beckhoff Automation explores with the ScAut (Scientific Automation) project how engineering-related findings from a wide range of disciplines can be integrated into automation technology in order to make technical systems more intelligent.
Angela Merkel visited the Beckhoff booth for the first time at Hannover Messe 2008.
