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Posted On: 06/26/2006

Sprechen sie industrial innovation?

PlantServices.com

By Rich Merritt, Senior Technical Editor

While big industrial trade shows in North America are shrinking, Hannover Fair in Germany continues to thrive. The Hannover Fairgrounds is the world’s largest trade fair facility, with 26 exhibit halls. The fair uses 17 of the exhibit halls, has more than 5,000 exhibitors from 66 countries and attracts 200,000 attendees. Each of the 17 halls is huge, so visitors get to see the equivalent of an ISA Show, National Manufacturing Week, Promat, Sensors Expo, NMTS, PACK EXPO, AM Expo and Quality Expo, in one place, and at the same time.

Vendor exhibits also are huge, perhaps two to three times the size of booths we are accustomed to seeing in the United States. Siemens has a permanent exhibit that has 29,500 sq.ft. of floor space on the lower level, and 22,000 sq.ft. on the upper level, making it nearly the size of a football field (57,600 sq.ft.). With such immense booths, exhibitors are able to display a huge number of products and some pretty big hardware. I saw an entire wind generator in one giant booth.

Halls were devoted to industrial facility management and services, power, factory automation, industrial building automation, pipeline technology, subcontracting and the digital factory. Individual halls hosted their own forums, paper sessions and events as sort of “shows within a show.” Hall 13 hosted an industrial facility management and services forum (paper sessions) every day, with speakers from vendors and industry. Hall 6 hosted a pipeline technology conference, and the World Energy Dialogue had paper sessions devoted to wind energy, fossil fuel power, power networks, oil and gas, and solar energy. Interkama, Hannover’s version of our ISA Show, took up six of the exhibit halls.

Clearly, you can find anything you want at Hannover Fair. Looking for new wireless technology? Forty companies exhibited wireless automation products. Looking for fuel cell technology? The Hydrogen and Fuel Cells group pavilion in Hall 13 had 100 exhibitors.

You’ll see some amazing stuff, hardware still in the Beta stage, and advanced products. American Power Conversion (APC) showed its new hydrogen-powered fuel cell that can replace diesel generators used for backup power. It’s clean, neat and fits in a 19-in. rack, right in the control room.

Rittal displayed cooling units using CO[-]2[-] as a refrigerant, thermoelectric cooling using nanotechnology and cold plate technology. Vietz showed a laser-based pipeline welding system. And Harting introduced its new RFID transponder that has a range of five meters and can be used in the vicinity of metals and liquids, making it suitable for tough industrial applications.

There probably were hundreds more examples of advanced technology but, because I don’t speak or read German, I missed them. Press conferences were in German, as were almost all the press kits. Even the Foundation Fieldbus press conference was in German.

Next year’s show will be even bigger, because it will incorporate power transmission and control. But brush up on your German if you go next year. While nearly every exhibitor and attendee at Hannover speaks English, booth signage and literature handouts are mostly in German. So, if you don’t know that “industriedienstleistungen und instandhaltung” means industrial services and maintenance, or "Prozess-Steuerung und Instrumentierung" is process control and instrumentation, you could walk right by a booth that has exactly what you are looking for. When you see familiar companies, such as Rockwell Automation or APC, you’ll sigh in relief to see signage in English.

Its emphasis on the German language is probably Hannover’s biggest problem, and it may be the reason why more North American engineers and press don’t go. Last year, only 6,000 people came from North America, and only a handful of press. While its promoters tout Hannover Fair as an international show, it clearly isn’t. It’s a huge German show aimed at a German audience. It just happens to have a large number of international exhibitors and attendees.

Still, it’s worth a visit, especially if you’re seeking new and innovative ways to solve plant engineering, maintenance, instrumentation and control problems. If it’s new and innovative, it’s at Hannover Fair. However, don’t expect to cover it in one day, like you might a North American show. Allow an entire week.