It was hard to miss the symbolism of President Obama’s visit to the Hannover Messe trade show floor.
Germany has a well earned a reputation as a manufacturing powerhouse. No slouch in manufacturing itself, the United States is also the world’s leading source of technological innovation. Obama’s visit, aimed at supporting a proposed U.S./E.U. trade deal, nonetheless revealed that while the countries are trying to join forces in the emerging union of manufacturing and the internet, numerous obstacles nevertheless remain to a full development of the marriage.
That’s changing, though not across the board. A 2016 Accenture report, for instance, found that only 40 percent of companies have developed a strategy for the Internet of Things. In places such as Russia and Latin America, the use of robots for manufacturing is still a novelty. These laggards may find it easy to catch up eventually. In the meantime, companies and nations on the cutting edge of the industrial internet saw some important incremental advances at Hannover Messe in the areas of additive manufacturing, robotics, data analytics and asset performance management, though security remains a lingering concern that could potentially limit growth.
Additive manufacturing
3D printing has been around for more than 30 years, but it’s become truly useful to manufacturers only recently. Gartner predicts that 3D printing will grow more than 14X between 2014 and 2019, to an overall market size of $14.6 billion. At present, 3D printers are mostly used for prototyping and replacement parts, which enhances the agility of the manufacturing process, but the day when such printers might be able to build an airplane by themselves is still far in the future.
Robotics
On the Hannover Messe exhibit floor, robots were hurling basketballs and hefting cars aloft. Some were menacing, others were cute, but the cute ones were more exciting. In particular, next-generation ‘bots like Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer can do precision work such as inserting spark plugs. Sawyer also sports a monitor screen with a face that alerts nearby human workers if he’s on task or has just made a mistake. He weighs in at only 64 pounds, which means he can be moved around pretty easily.
Sawyer and some other “collaborative robots” of his ilk can learn a new task in a few minutes. That makes them more adaptable and useful than the old-style robots that were bolted in place and tasked with a single function. Only around 10 percent of factories now use robots, but new-style bots like Sawyer might change that.
Promise and obstacles
While such innovations are interesting, the primary draw for businesses is greater efficiency. For instance, GE applied industrial internet technology with the introduction of Trip Optimizer, a cruise control system for trains that analyzes data to control for route topology and prevailing conditions. The system has been able to reduce fuel consumption by an average of about 10 percent.
Overall, the industrial internet could add as much as $15 trillion to the world economy by 2030, according to a 2015 GE report. Much of that comes in the form of savings via new efficiencies.
Security is an important potential hitch. Data breaches at major corporations occur fairly regularly these days, leaving a business open to both financial loss and a compromise of their customers’ privacy. The hacking of an industrial internet system could be far worse. Power outages, accidents and even deaths are not inconceivable.
In the absence of an industry-wide response, companies are throwing more resources at security than ever before. GE, for instance, has built unprecedented layers of security into its Predix industrial internet software.
While no fail-safe security system has emerged, it’s still early. The Hannover Messe exhibit was a snapshot of a burgeoning industry. The large number of U.S. firms and the U.S. president’s appearance signaled that this could be a watershed year for the marriage of the internet and manufacturing.
Todd Wasserman has been writing professionally for over 20 years and was most recently Mashable’s Business Editor. From 1999-2010, he covered the advertising and marketing industry for Brandweek, and became editor-in-chief in 2007. He wrote for Computer Retail Week and various dailys, and freelanced for The New York Times, Business 2.0, The Hollywood Reporter and Inc., among others. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, Fox Business and BBC America.