AWL organizes successful customer event – Stay in control with excellent machine control
On September 16 and 17, customers from across Europe came to Harderwijk for a special AWL event on Controls. During this lunch2lunch event we took them on a journey about machine control. Together with our strategic partners we set up a programme which offered a multitude of information and suggestions. At the end of the event everyone not only had a better understanding about current ways of working, they also had an insight into the plans for the future.
The programme was full with interesting presentations and sessions from various guest speakers. Microsoft and Siemens both shared their visions for the future, and that it was clear that the future has a lot in store, but that it is also very difficult to predict what will be reality in 10 – 15 years and what will still be fiction.
Festo was also present as a guest speaker and talked about their way of working, especially related to the automatic tracking and tracing of orders. They used a nice example of an AWL order and how they process such an order.
Harms & Wende gave a presentation about the European Research project XPRESS, in which AWL and Harms & Wende play an important role. The goal of XPRESS is to realize a novel production concept for a flexible and multi-variant production, integrated quality-assurance systems for quality monitoring of the production processes, and to develop production simulation for the reduction of the production ramp-up time and production costs.
Another interesting presentation was given by 4D, a company involved in the monitoring and registration of weld quality in laser applications. As laser is a booming technology it was a great opportunity for many attendees to see the possibilities of process control tools for laser applications.
AWL was of course also present and we presented our insights into machine controls. We got the chance to explain how our object-oriented approach works and how we integrated this into our machines. Another great example was IT-Data transfer, which is how to get information from your ERP system, where all the production orders are generated, to your machines without having to check and coordinate everything manually. With the help of an intermediate MES (Management Execution System) system you are able to run a fully-automated production process in which all process steps are controlled and guided from one system.
On the shop floor there was an exciting presentation about the use of the new generation Human Machine Interfaces and how easy it is to control the complete machine and to be in control of what is going on.
As the presentations where spread over two days we had ample opportunity to interact with everyone and even participate in an active evening programme with hand- and cross bow shooting, followed of by a pleasant dinner.
The next day another line up of interesting sessions and a tour of the AWL shop floor was planned. After lunch it was time for most to return home.
We look back on two very successful, interesting, fun and mind-blowing days in which we not only got the chance to inform our customers about new and innovative ways of working, but also got the chance to deepen our relationship.