THM MBA hosts 3 day event on „Innovation and Industrie 4.0“ in Frankfurt

Author: Jan Freidank

After last year’s great success the THM MBA hosted its second event on “Innovation and Industrie 4.0”. Special guest were students and alumni from the Baltic Management Institute in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event was a mixture of presentations by experts and specialists and visits to companies which are at the leading edge for the current digitalization trend in the German industry. The event was a great success and an inspiration for those who participated.

THM MBA hosts 3 day event on „Innovation and Industrie 4.0“ in Frankfurt

From Thursday June 29th to Saturday July 1st the THM MBA hosted a three day event “Innovation and Industrie 4.0” for students and Alumni from our partner Baltic Management Institute (Vilnius, Lithuania).

The opening session was held in the Messe-Tower Frankfurt by Prof. Hayo Reimers who gave an overview and outlook on the state of the German and European economy. It was followed by an introduction to the topic of Industrie 4.0 and Digitalization by Martin Heinz, General Manager at iTAC a leading provider of factory automation software. In the afternoon the group could see a show case for Industie 4.0 at Continental, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers.

On Friday the group visited a hidden champion in Lahnau (near Giessen) called Janitza Electronics. Janitza is producing measurement devices to monitor power consumption in buildings and even factories. Its system can monitor energy use and quality of energy down to the machine level. The unique feature is that all devices communicate with each other and provide information to a designated cloud which can be accessed worldwide with any end user device (e.g. mobile phone, laptop). In the afternoon the group once again got in touch with the automotive side of our economy visiting Opel in Rüsselsheim. In the evening everyone could relax at “Mutter Ernst” a famous Applewoi pub in Frankfurt before heading for some night life at the “Opernplatzfest” or other pubs in Sachsenhausen.

On the final day Prof. Gerrit Sames finished the event with a very engaging presentation on the State of the Art of Industrie 4.0 as well as current trends. He even brought with him some easy to use communication devices such as RFID chips which he could program to react to certain smart phone commands. As he says easy communication between things and humans as well as intelligent data processing will form the heart of the new industrial revolution. Before heading back to Vilnius with many new impressions and inspirations the group toured the wonderful city of Frankfurt and visited famous places like “Römer”, Frankfurt Cathedral or German Stock Exchange.

We want to extent a very special thank you to our MBA alumni Tim Lunkenheimer from Continental and Konstantin Kimpel from Opel for organizing the field trips to their companies. Another thank you goes to Ralf Niggemann who is the network manager for the W3+ Industry Network in Wetzlar for connecting us to Janitza, one of the network’s members. Finally, we would like to thank Prof. Joachim Sandt for hosting us at his new work place Frankfurt UAS.

// Prof. Dr. Jan Freidank