by Xinhua writer Chu Yi
HANNOVER, Germany, April 25 (Xinhua) -- From enhancing productivity to fostering sustainable development, artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the industrial world, emerging as one of the most heated topic globally.
At the ongoing 2024 Hannover Messe, Germany's leading industrial trade fair, the overwhelming trend of AI is also shown, as global industrial leaders have converged to showcase cutting-edge products and innovations in the AI arena.
"Innovation, the desire to develop new things, is what one feels here," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the fair. "AI could be found in even the smallest products."
Jonas Gahr Store, prime minister of Norway, this year's partner country, was also impressed, saying that "many of the things that we have seen here today would have been science fiction if introduced five years ago."
This year's Hannover Messe kicked off on Monday and runs until Friday, featuring key topics including digitalization, energy transformation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
As one of the world's largest international events in the industrial sector, Hannover Messe is renowned as the "barometer of world industrial development." Almost 4,000 exhibitors from around 60 countries and regions participated in this year's event.
At Hannover Messe 2024, Siemens presented the first generative AI product for engineering in an industrial environment. The Siemens Industrial Copilot, the generative AI-powered assistant, is now seamlessly connected to the Totally Integrated Automation Portal.
According to the company, with the new launch, the engineering of complex tasks will become less susceptible to errors. "This in turn reduces development times and boosts quality and productivity over the long term."
"With the Industrial Copilot, we will augment different people along the whole value chain, from design to planning, to an engineer, to operations," Eric Scepanski, a technical expert with Siemens, told Xinhua during the trade fair.
He further elaborated that by inputting requirements, the Industrial Copilot can swiftly generate an optimal solution within a matter of minutes. "This technological advancement will significantly address the shortage of skilled personnel while enhancing production efficiency," he said.
"AI can become something like men's best friend in the industrial world, where the Copilot is always at your side in a new era of human-machine collaboration. It helps us relieve ourselves of monotonous tasks so that we can concentrate on what is important. It helps us discover errors and find better solutions for them much faster," said Cedrik Neike, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of the company's digital industries division.
"AI has the potential to give people without technical know-how the chance to contribute with their ideas. It's about building smarter applications with just a few clicks," he said.
Neike said he is convinced that thanks to AI, people will be able to concentrate much more on developing ideas, thus improving products and production. "This will accelerate in the coming years."
Gu Yue, vice president and head of Marketing, China and East Asia Operations of Schneider Electric, said, "Previously, if we encountered an issue at one link, we would halt all production lines, potentially reducing overall production capacity."
"However, with the aid of AI technology now, we can address these issues efficiently. Simple actions such as drag-and-drop operations allow for fast and flexible segmentation without the need to rewrite code," he said.
At the Hannover Messe German software giant SAP announced AI advancements in its supply chain solutions "that will unleash a transformative wave of productivity, efficiency and precision in manufacturing."
According to the company, AI-driven insights from real-time data will help companies use their own data to make better decisions across supply chains, streamline product development, and improve manufacturing efficiency.
Georg Kube, global head of Industry Data Ecosystems at SAP, told Xinhua that SAP mainly focuses on business AI.
"It means we use it for further business processes of all types of product development to gather and formalize requirements in the market and ensure quality control," he said, citing an example that in the production process, business AI helps identify deviations and facilitates necessary adjustments. "It also aids in the management and maintenance of large equipment and machinery."
"Artificial intelligence functions as a super-brain, offering immense potential to enhance production efficiency and optimize resource management," said Yao Yuan, a senior product specialist of SAP. ■