umati Open House

umati Open House in Shang­hai — Cre­at­ing a Demon­stra­tion Eco­sys­tem for Intel­li­gent Production

On the after­noon of Novem­ber 1, 2024, the umati Open House event was suc­cess­fully held at the “Smart IoT Pro­duc­tion” show­room in the Shang­hai Waigaoqiao Intel­li­gent Man­u­fac­tur­ing Tech­no­logy (IMT) dis­trict. This event aimed to provide a plat­form for mem­bers of the umati glob­al com­munity to show­case and share their advanced digit­al prac­tices while enhan­cing pub­lic under­stand­ing of digit­al con­cepts based on OPC UA.

The Open House, hos­ted in the show­room estab­lished in 2022, reflects the diversity of the umati eco­sys­tem in China. The “Smart IoT Pro­duc­tion” show­room was cre­ated through stra­tegic cooper­a­tion between the VDW Shang­hai Rep­res­ent­at­ive Office and Waigaoqiao IMT. Both organ­iz­a­tions offi­cially launched the show­room in 2022 to cre­ate an eco­sys­tem for intel­li­gent pro­duc­tion inter­con­nectiv­ity, show­case prac­tic­al applic­a­tions, and pro­mote digit­al trans­form­a­tion with­in the industry.

The umati demon­strat­ors and the “Smart IoT Pro­duc­tion” show­room play cru­cial roles in estab­lish­ing this eco­sys­tem. As the umati com­munity con­tin­ues to grow, a diverse eco­sys­tem has begun to take shape. Fol­low­ing a joint demon­stra­tion by core part­ners United Grind­ing China and Lieb­herr in the show­room in 2023, umati’s reg­u­lar demon­stra­tion base in China wel­comed a new part­ner, Shang­hai SmartState Tech­no­logy, in July of this year.

umati is the over­arch­ing struc­ture encom­passing vari­ous OPC UA stand­ards across mul­tiple tech­no­lo­gies in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. It fosters com­mon mar­ket aware­ness and vis­ib­il­ity while ensur­ing inter­op­er­ab­il­ity among imple­ment­a­tions and prac­tices related to these standards.

Dr. Alex­an­der Broos, the pro­ject lead­er of umati and Research and Tech­no­logy Dir­ect­or of VDW, noted that the num­ber of OPC UA sup­port­ing spe­cific­a­tions under umati has been increas­ing in recent years. This expan­sion allows users to access data from a broad­er range of applic­a­tions. Fur­ther­more, umati is con­tinu­ously upgrad­ing its demon­stra­tion infra­struc­ture. The cur­rent applic­a­tion of MQTT publish/subscribe tech­no­logy enables umati devices to be util­ized in real indus­tri­al envir­on­ments without the need for addi­tion­al work.

Look­ing ahead, Dr. Broos emphas­ized the import­ance of con­nect­ing with man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pan­ies to cre­ate prac­tic­al applic­a­tions that demon­strate the value of uni­ver­sal, stand­ard­ized, and open inter­faces in the man­u­fac­tur­ing industry. He believes these efforts will ulti­mately enhance the busi­ness cap­ab­il­it­ies of users through inter­op­er­able machinery.

The event fea­tured speeches from key industry rep­res­ent­at­ives, includ­ing Daniel Yoo, Chief Rep­res­ent­at­ive of the VDMA Shang­hai Rep­res­ent­at­ive Office; Wen­jun Qiao, Digit­al Dir­ect­or of Shang­hai SmartState; Björn Frerking, Head of Asi­an Busi­ness for Siemens Machine Tool Sys­tems; and Kylin Yang, Applic­a­tion Dir­ect­or of United Grind­ing China. These speak­ers, rep­res­ent­ing an industry asso­ci­ation (VDMA), a high-end equip­ment and indus­tri­al soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ing and integ­ra­tion ser­vice pro­vider (Shang­hai SmartState), a CNC sys­tem sup­pli­er (Siemens), and a machine tool man­u­fac­turer (United Grind­ing China), provided valu­able insights into indus­tri­al IoT and digit­al production.

umati looks for­ward to show­cas­ing the diversity of the Intel­li­gent Pro­duc­tion eco­sys­tem along­side more part­ners at future events!

Pic­ture Sub­title: umati Open House in Shang­hai in Novem­ber 2024 (Copy­right: VDW)

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