umati opens showroom in China

Start­ing now, those inter­ested in China can exper­i­ence the bene­fits of open, stand­ard­ized inter­faces based on OPC UA and get a closer look at umati. We inaug­ur­ated the “Smart IoT in Pro­duc­tion” Show­room in Pud­ong, Shang­hai, in Novem­ber 2023. The event was atten­ded by Deputy Con­sul Gen­er­al Lukas Mey­er from the Con­su­late Gen­er­al of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many in Shang­hai, Rep­res­ent­at­ive Yugang Zhao from the Free Trade Zone admin­is­tra­tion, and numer­ous invited guests.

Dr. Alex­an­der Broos, Head of Research and Tech­no­logy at VDW and umati Pro­ject Lead­er, expresses enthu­si­asm for the new oppor­tun­it­ies the show­room brings: “The future of con­nectiv­ity is digit­al – but some­times, a phys­ic­al plat­form is needed for per­son­al inter­ac­tion and dir­ect product present­a­tions. The show­room makes the bene­fits of umati tan­gible, espe­cially in China, one of the most import­ant and largest mar­kets for the industry.”

The show­room, a joint effort by VDW and the oper­at­or of the Inter­na­tion­al Machine Tool Cen­ter (IMT) in the Pilot Free Trade Zone, offers a space of approx­im­ately 500 m² for com­pan­ies to show­case their smart pro­duc­tion tech­no­logy pub­licly and meet poten­tial cus­tom­ers and part­ners. Per­man­ent exhib­i­tion stands are avail­able for rent, and among the first exhib­it­ors are the Chinese branches of Lieb­herr-Verzahn­tech­nik from Kempten and the United Grind­ing Group from Bern, Switzerland.

umati util­izes a per­man­ent booth on the exhib­i­tion floor to present the pos­sib­il­it­ies of open data net­work­ing based on OPC UA. It also serves as a base for col­lab­or­a­tion with Chinese com­pan­ies and the loc­al con­nectiv­ity ini­ti­at­ive NC Link. To provide a live exper­i­ence of net­work­ing from China, an intel­li­gent cal­iper from Mahr, Göt­tin­gen, and a laser engrav­ing machine from Trumpf, Ditzin­gen, are integ­rated into the umati dash­board. Addi­tion­ally, Georg Fisc­her Machin­ing Solu­tions, Schaff­hausen, Switzer­land, has a live-con­nec­ted machine.

Broos high­lights the glob­al aspect of the show­room in China: “The dash­board used is the same as that util­ized world­wide. This once again proves that con­sist­ent imple­ment­a­tion and use of open data inter­faces need not be con­strained by nation­al bor­ders. Con­nectiv­ity in mech­an­ic­al engin­eer­ing is a glob­al mat­ter.” The show­room is open to all com­pan­ies loc­ated in IMT and all umati part­ners in China, and it can also be util­ized as an event venue.