Three years of corona restrictions, three years in which the world kept turning. A long time in which the challenges for German industry became ever greater. In any case, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) could hardly wait. “I’m very happy that the Hannover Messe is starting again,” he said at the start on Sunday evening. A trade fair that is about a lot. From the international competitiveness of the location to the conversion of the economy towards CO2 neutrality.
The wishes of the industry can be summed up in long speeches or in a single sentence. “We need a jolt,” says Christian Thönes, CEO of DMG MORI, a mechanical engineering company. Of course, Thönes doesn’t just leave it at one sentence. “We need more fun with the new,” said the manager on Sunday at the Economic Forum of the Federation of German Industries in Hanover. “We have to behave. The Americans are braver.”
Thönes is in the right place in Hanover, because the Hanover Fair will be taking place there in the next few days. The companies want to show what they can do, the best innovations. And a lot of that will be needed in the coming years. “A lot will change,” says Veronika Grimm, an economist, and warns against maintaining stocks and only relying on one technological option, “we need a wide range of options”.
The past few years have shown “how vulnerable Germany is,” says BDI President Siegfried Russwurm: “We’ve shown that we can handle a crisis. We coped with the challenges quite well – looking back.” The world remains uncertain, says Russwurm. But it is now time to switch from crisis to transformation mode. The former Siemens manager does not like comparisons with the pre-crisis mode. He calls for comparisons with other countries and competitors. Since Russwurm has identified “dynamic gaps”. “We have to make an effort.”
And the lobbyist also believes he has figured out what is slowing the momentum. There is too much bureaucracy and “distrust regulation” in Germany. Russwurm calls for a different way of dealing with innovations. He doesn’t want to live in a risk-free world, he says: “You can build a padded cell, but it’s no fun in it.”
At the Hannover Messe this year, the industry wants to open “a new chapter of Industry 4.0 with Manufacturing X,” said Gunther Kegel, President of the ZVEI electrical and digital association and CEO of Pepperl + Fuchs. It’s about networking beyond the borders of your own company. With Manufacturing-X, a “European, secure and trustworthy data room” should be built. So far, the necessary data integration projects have often failed because of the “astronomical costs,” says Kegel.
Manufacturing X with a standardized data model will dramatically reduce costs and make many digital business models more attractive. To a large extent, these served the major challenges: resilience, sustainability and climate protection. For Kegel, the energy turnaround is “in reality, above all, an energy efficiency turnaround.” The energy turnaround cannot be achieved simply by adding more plants to generate renewable energy.