Advanced Factories and Advanced Machine Tools open accreditations for their next edition

2023-02-10

Advanced Factories, an industrial automation and robotics event in southern Europe, and AMT – Advanced Machine Tools, the new biennial technological event for the machine tool sector, are opening accreditations for their next edition, which will take place from April 18 to 20 at Fira de Barcelona – Gran Vía. Both events, which will be held simultaneously, will bring together more than 30,000 professionals from different industries in search of the latest solutions in automation and industrial robotics to improve the productivity of their factories, and state-of-the-art machine tools for the renovation of equipment.

In total, more than 450 exhibiting firms that will occupy 35,000 square meters of innovation with the latest innovations in industrial automation systems, robotics, additive manufacturing, AI, digital twin, data analytics, cybersecurity or integrated production systems, as well as the latest solutions in cutting, starting, deformation, laser, drilling, milling, stamping, press or polishing machinery, among many other functionalities.

New trends such as the metaverse in the industry and chatGPT

The context of inflation at a global level and the situation of struggle for the competitiveness and positioning of the industries of three major economies such as China, the United States and Europe, will be the subject of discussion with the economist Xavier Sala-i-Martín, from Columbia University, who will explain at the Industry 4.0 Congress how these three major markets are facing and how they all bet on talent (natural intelligence), and creativity as keys in that positioning.

The congress is betting one more edition to show the best practices through industrial experiences such as those of Nestlé, Nippon Gases, Premo Group, Relats, or that of Enagás, by the hand of its director of services, Rosa Nieto. In addition, professionals such as Xavier Pujol, CEO of Reibus, will offer the keys to a successful implementation of industrial automation and digitalization as key elements to improve the competitiveness of the industrial sector.

“There has been talk for some time that Artificial Intelligence will be one of the technologies with the greatest impact on the competitiveness of companies. It is already being used as a support element in decision-making and that leads us to a central element that is the human factor. In this edition, the interaction with AI and its judicious use will be recurring topics of debate,” highlights Òscar Íñigo, director of the Industry 4.0 Congress. That is why experts in the sector will analyze how Deep Learning and tools such as chatGPT can also be used in the industry to help with operational tasks, marketing or even to solve problems or doubts about the operation of a machine. The problem is that today there is a talent deficit (data engineers, for example) which will force companies to train operators with Artificial Intelligence tools. “Who we will compete with is not a robot or a chatbot, but a person who uses these solutions judiciously,” adds Inigo.

Another of the trends of recent months is the metaverse. In recent years, the Digital Twin was already being applied to have a dual reality and to be able to simulate the operation of machines virtually. But the metaverse goes one step further to work in virtual space as an environment with its own meaning. Operating a machine from home or from anywhere without the need for the operator to be physically at the plant is an explorable possibility thanks to the metaverse. Toni Laserna, co-founder of Logika, and Xavi Delgado, promoter from BITLAB of the deployment of digitalization in the classrooms, will reveal the future of immersive technologies (XR) in the industrial sector.

For three days, the Industry 4.0 Congress will share successful cases of application of industry 4.0 solutions in production plants, as well as future trends that will improve the competitiveness of the sector by the hand of 380 experts, among whom Alicia Asín, CEO and co-founder of Libelium; or Cristina Periago, human factors engineer of Applus+ Idiada stand out.

Investment in new, more efficient machinery

Within the framework of AMT – Advanced Machine Tools, the Metal Industry 4.0 Congress will also be held, in which industrial experiences and success stories in the metal industry will be announced, as well as the importance of investing in new machinery that allows faster and higher quality production will be discussed. In this sense, Diego Galar, from the University of Lulea (Sweden) and advisor to the main machine tool manufacturers, will share the latest trends in the sector, such as condition monitoring, which offers predictive maintenance of the state and safety of machines by combining machine sensor data in real time or the metaverse or machine community.