Munich-based star­tups host Smart Fac­tory Lab

Star­tups are build­ing the fac­tory of the future in Munich.

Shap­ing Indus­try 4.0 together — This is the goal of the Smart Fac­tory Lab, which will take place for the first time on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2018 in Munich. The event is filled with keynotes and dis­cus­sions about the net­worked fac­tory of the future. More than 200 renowned top man­agers from the logis­tics and pro­duc­tion indus­try will join Mag­a­zino and other star­tups in think­ing about new approaches for the fac­tory of tomorrow.

“We believe that peo­ple will con­tinue to be an inte­gral part of indus­try. But gen­eral visions of the future are not enough. We need con­cepts that we can now imple­ment,” says Thomas Kirch­ner, founder and CEO of ProGlove. That is why the first Smart Fac­tory Lab will not focus on the­o­ret­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions, but on the appli­ca­tion and pro­to­typ­ing of ideas: For the first time, mass pro­to­typ­ing in this form will make for­ward-look­ing con­cepts tan­gi­ble. “At the Smart Fac­tory Lab, start-ups and com­pa­nies are work­ing together to build the future of Indus­try 4.0, because if some­one real­izes the Smart Fac­tory, then we star­tups here in Munich.”

Christin Eisen­schmid, Gen­eral Man­ager of Intel Ger­many, opens the Smart Fac­tory Lab. In the sec­ond keynote, Dr. Har­ald Kolbe, Head of Dig­i­tal Inno­va­tion at Lufthansa Tech­nik Logis­tik Ser­vices (LTLS), describes the use of smart wear­ables in LTLS’s Dig­i­tal Ware­house. Hen­dric Fiege, Direc­tor New Ven­tures, and Andreas Pott, Direc­tor Cor­po­rate Devel­op­ment (both Fiege), will present con­crete appli­ca­tions from the Smart Logis­tics sec­tor before Dr. Michael Korte, Tech­nol­ogy Development/Digital Pro­duc­tion (Audi AG), will present cur­rent devel­op­ments in Audi pro­duc­tion against the back­ground of the dig­i­tal factory.

The startup founders of Celo­nis, NavVis, Blik, Kinexon and Mag­a­zino will also talk about the var­i­ous approaches to future-ori­ented solu­tions in the field of logis­tics and pro­duc­tion. “We are very excited to be part of the Smart Fac­tory Lab,” says Fred­erik Brant­ner, CEO of Mag­a­zino. “As dif­fer­ent as our solu­tions for the future of the indus­try may be, at the core we have a sim­i­lar vision of the Smart Fac­tory. It’s nice that we star­tups here in Munich sup­port each other and jointly pro­mote ideas for indus­try 4.0.”

Finally, Peter Schwarzen­bauer, Mem­ber of the Board of Man­age­ment of BMW AG, MINI, Rolls-Royce, BMW Motor­rad, Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence and Dig­i­tal Busi­ness Inno­va­tion BMW Group reports on the impor­tance of suc­cess­ful coop­er­a­tion between start-ups and com­pa­nies. “Today, our inno­va­tion spec­trum extends far beyond the clas­sic auto­mo­tive value chain. We are already work­ing very suc­cess­fully with inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative star­tups such as ProGlove. Workaround GmbH has fur­ther devel­oped its intel­li­gent wear­able in our pro­duc­tion plant in Din­golfin­gen and opti­mized it for indus­trial appli­ca­tion together with us. So it’s a real win-win sit­u­a­tion. The Smart Fac­tory Lab relies pre­cisely on this idea-dri­ven exchange in order to develop new con­cepts for the fac­tory of tomorrow”.