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Hannover Messe Wrap-Up over an AI-Powered Coffee

Jun 17, 2022

Elisa IndustrIQ Hannover Messe 2023 booth

The comeback of HANNOVER MESSE came at just the right time. In the face of disrupted supply chains, rising energy prices, inflation and climate change, it was all the more important to meet again face-to-face to take in the latest technology trends and get a window to the future. Take a look at our recap below to see some of the highlights of the event if you did not get a chance to attend the show and would like to learn more about Elisa IndustrIQ’s manufacturing software solutions.

From May 28 to June 3, the Elisa IndustrIQ team, together with camLinesedApta Group and Tenforce, were onsite at Hannover to gain valuable industry insight, meet with customers, and demo our solutions. It was a pleasure to meet so many inspired professionals, share development ideas with each other and showcase our solutions to the world.

The event brought together 75k visitors for 4 days of educational sessions and networking opportunities. The Elisa IndustrIQ team enjoyed engaging in various discussions surrounding the ever-changing landscape of manufacturing software, from the rise of Artificial Intelligence in optimizing supply chains to increasing yield in production with analytics while reducing costs, ensuring quality and being more sustainable.

The event was also a great opportunity for us to showcase our capabilities in practice and show what we’ve been busy working on together with our customers and partners. The focal point of our booth was the AI coffee machine demo which successfully managed to draw crowds to our stand throughout the event.

putting ai to work: moving from Data to insight

AI and Machine Learning can deliver unprecedented value to supply chains and logistics operations. From cost savings through reduced operational redundancies and risk mitigation, to more accurate capacity planning, improved productivity, higher quality, lower costs, and greater output, all while fostering safer working conditions.

We wanted to demonstrate how this works in practice and showcase our software’s capabilities on a real machine in a pleasant and easy-going atmosphere. And what better way to draw the crowd to our booth and get people’s attention than by enticing unsuspecting, caffeine-deprived passers-by with freshly brewed Maqii coffee. For this purpose, we decided to hook up to an intelligent, fully automatic coffee machine from WMF.

WMF coffee machines, similarly to CNC machines used in manufacturing, produce enough data for us to demonstrate our solutions, while delighting discerning coffee enthusiasts with delicious, exquisite gourmet coffee. In other words, they work as a perfect lure for our demonstration purposes at these types of events.

With a light and easy integration, we were able to gain control over processes related to the management and operation of the coffee machine. We set up 3Dvisualizr, our 3D visualization engine, to display information related to the operations of the coffee maker; show its status, indicate whether the machine is operational or idle, and display error and maintenance messages, along production and resource consumption statistics.

We were working with operational data, namely temperature of the boiler and the steam. The error messages that were pushed to 3Dvisualzr informed us about the need of refilling the water tank, need for emptying the ground coffee container, as well as information on system cleaning. We were also able to view operational statistics with a breakdown based on recipe of how many coffees were consumed, the amount of water and milk used according to recipe, and cleaning statistics.

Our integration also allowed for installing of various modules from the Elisa IndustrIQ solution portfolio. This way we were able to pick and choose the features and functionality we needed for our demonstration.

Our main objective was to show how you can remotely execute production cycles of beverages from our manufacturing execution system and how you can inject recipes into the machine remotely. So very similar as you would operate a CNC machine in a production environment, you just choose the recipe, and the machine executes the whole operation by itself, while you kick back enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee.

Additionally, we wanted to show how users could create work orders and incident reports in the system, showcase planning of the production process, schedule production, and finally show how to execute the production process. Our aim was not to show all our solutions, but to show how the different modules work seamlessly together once directly connected to the coffee machine.

ai in manufacturing: what are the benefits

Having the ability to manage and monitor operations remotely, view the status and statistics and receive maintenance requirements and error messages was useful for monitoring and maintaining the stability of the process. Without looking at the machine or even being in its vicinity, 3Dvisualizr would inform us when something was wrong, and when it would need our attention or maintenance.

Combining the different pieces of information that we found necessary and valuable from the point of view of operations of the machine, was a great improvement to the functionality and overall productivity. With increasing competition in a connected digital world, it becomes even more important to maximise productivity by having critical information widely available and by reducing uncertainties of any and all kinds.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning drive enterprise-wide visibility into all aspects of the supply chain with accuracy and speed that humans simply can’t mimic at scale. This results in increased speed in decision-making, speed in reducing cycle-times, speed in operations, and speed in continuous improvement.

Mounting expectations of supersonic speed and efficiencies between suppliers and business partners of all types further underscores the need for the industry to leverage the prowess of the Artificial Intelligence in supply chains. Going forward, every business process will become collaborative, powered by data and AI, and will bridge the digital and physical worlds.

Based on the statistics provided by our coffee machine and the turnout at our booth, we were successful at demonstrating our modular software solutions for manufacturing to nearly 400 people. Thank you for visiting and taking the time to listen to our presentation. Hopefully you enjoyed the coffee and were able to catch our AI coffee machine doing its best to create a buzz amongst our visitors.

If you happened to miss our demo yet would like to learn more about our products and solutions, drop us a line. We would be more than happy to schedule a demo with you online. Unfortunately, if you’re here just for the coffee, it will have to wait for next year’s event.

How To Improve Resilience And Grow Your Business Sustainably

Unexpected disruptive events in manufacturing always interrupt normal production conditions and cause production loss. How resilient are your planning and manufacturing processes? Are you prepared to deal with the unexpected?

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