Aventics joined Lemgo-based research and development centre, Centrum Industrial IT (CIIT), as a strategic partner over a year ago. The first projects are complete and collaboration with developers and researches from CIIT will soon be expanded.
“The Industrial Internet of Things focuses on connecting all components and systems in the industrial environment. This is a challenge that can’t be tackled by a single person or company, but instead requires a cooperative effort,” concluded Wolf Gerecke, director strategic product management at Aventics. “Ultimately, all components should be able to communicate with each other. This means we need environments where companies can work together to test and research – and CIIT is perfect for this.”
When it comes to the Industrial Internet of Things, Aventics has realised that banding together is necessary to drive the topic forward. CIIT offers partners from business, sciences, and research the opportunity to work together under one roof, researching basics and developing products until they are ready for the market.
“We first established contact with CIIT at the 2015 Hannover Messe,” Gerecke continued. “Aventics has been on board since February 2, 2016.”
The combined forces of an association and research community allow us to informally discuss ideas and try them out right away in the close-by SmartFactoryOWL, the Lemgo research and demonstration factory of the Fraunhofer IOSB-INA and the OWL University of Applied Sciences.
For Aventics, CIIT is the ideal partner for developing solutions in line with the market within the context of the Industrial Internet of Things. The pneumatics specialists, on the other hand, round off the research community’s portfolio.
“In Aventics, we have acquired a partner with competencies that supplement us in the field of intelligent pneumatics,” said Professor Jürgen Jasperneite, head of the Fraunhofer Application Centre for Industrial Automation (IOSB-INA) and one of the co-initiators of CIIT.
Sybille Hilker, managing director of CIIT, added: “The fact that a global player like Aventics is now a committed partner, contributing its expertise, shows the international awareness of the Lemgo location’s key role in the fields of IT and automation technology.”
With this membership to CIIT, Aventics also has offices in Lemgo. Currently the company is occupied by specific projects, but it is also planned to station Aventics employees there permanently. “The colleagues will then be involved in everything happening there. Our goal is to really be able to work on topics for the long term.”
Aventics has already finished two projects at the CIIT. Together with the local Fraunhofer Institute, Aventics conducted a study as to how the company can optimally implement the Industrial Internet of Things. “Fraunhofer has changed our view of the market with pneumatics components to include economic aspects, moving more towards energy-efficiency, preventive maintenance, and increased production availability,” explained Gerecke.
In a second project, Aventics collaborated with Boge Kompressoren, introduced by CIIT. “The best result comes from consumers and producers communicating directly, as is already common practice in the energy industry with intelligent grids.” Similarly, Boge hoped to develop an intelligent compressed air network with its compressors, and Aventics had the perfect pneumatics. “The idea came about in November 2016, and the companies were already able to present a joint demonstrator at the Boge booth at the 2017 Hannover Messe. The CIIT specialists provided great support in integration.”
Follow-up projects with CIIT are already in the pipeline: anomaly detection at the component level and concepts for integrating components of different makes into networked systems. The CIIT and the adjacent SmartFactoryOWL offer the ideal developing and testing environment for the upcoming projects.
