Friday, June 9, 2017
This is what the wood industry has been waiting for. “tapio” combines digital products for the entire wood industry with thousands of production machines from all manufacturers, different software solutions and a very diverse range of materials and tools in an IoT platform (“Internet of Things”). In short: This digital platform completely covers the wood industry value chain. The foundation for tapio is the close collaboration with major, renowned software partners such as Microsoft and Software AG.
Just one of tapio’s numerous advantages is the mobile status display of machines (worldwide) in real time. The fair visitors were just fascinated and amazed: Anyone who used their smartphones to visit at the official website of tapio while at LIGNA was able to track and analyze the current operational performance of individual fair machines and cells live and in real time via WebApp.
Goals exceeded: Record trade fair and increased internationality
Whether visitor numbers, promising contacts or incoming orders: HOMAG has surpassed all goals set before the fair. HOMAG experts had more trade fair talks and discussions in Hannover than ever before. The furniture sector was especially interested and excited, in particular, solutions for kitchen and home furniture production including interior fittings and construction.
A total of 93,000 people from over more than 100 countries visited LIGNA in Hannover. Nearly 65% of the visitors to HOMAG’s exhibition booth traveled from international destinations. The highest visitor numbers were recorded from Poland, Austria and the USA. But also numerous visiting groups from Japan, China, Australia, South America and Canada made the HOMAG booth a fixed stop on their tour of the trade fair.
Overall, LIGNA once again thrilled as an industry leading trade fair and delivered an outstanding performance. This was also confirmed by Pekka Paasivaara (CEO of HOMAG Group): “It was an excellent LIGNA for us. The HOMAG booth was very well attended. The 100-meter-long batch size 1 plant, our InnovationCenter and especially tapio, the digital platform for the wood industry, fascinated visitors. And especially our skilled craft and trade area was also very well visited. Internationality has increased and LIGNA has once again presented itself as a world leading trade fair.”
Software: Interest has never been so strong
At LIGNA, HOMAG presented 50 machines from all performance classes that are ready for Industry 4.0 – through comprehensive software from the point of sale, over the entire production line to packaging, and by intelligent technologies and processes that communicate with each other.
The enormous interest shown by the show’s visitors just confirms the fact that the demand for complete software solutions is continuing to grow in importance. So HOMAG completely relaunched the software product portfolio in time for LIGNA. By using modern visualizations, it demonstrated how individual solutions for companies from the trade and industry are configured from a modular kit – “One Platform for Integrated Solutions”. The HOMAG experts in charge of the new product line “ProCollection” really had a lot to do. The modular end-to-end system provides an integrated solution for users from the interior construction and furniture industry, from sales planning through graphic order entry to the new production control system. This is called “ControllerMES” and is regarded as a fully developed and solid software basis for future requirements. The new production control system delivers 100% transparency in production and covers everything from production planning with optimal production lots through providing and generating production data for machines (cutting, edgebanding, CNC), up to the end report after final assembly.
Workshop concepts for woodworking Shops
For visitors from woodworking shops, HOMAG showed clever concepts from an entry level to an industrial and networked workshop. At a small entry level workshop, visitors could find the solution to step into the zero-joint technology – with the airTec unit as well as the new PU gluing technology for fast glue and color changes. On the small panel saw, mitre cuts could already be performed on the saw. The workshop also had a machine for body press technology and a CNC machine for vertical drilling. At the workshop for the industrial entry level area, a saw-bearing nesting cell and a drilling and dowel inserting machine were in operation fully networked with continuous data flow. The new IntelliGuide operator assistance system, which took second place at the SCHULER Novelty Symposium, was used on the panel-sizing saw.
Future Technology: Over 5,500 visitors at the Innovation Center
At the InnovationCenter – in the heart of the exhibition stand – HOMAG reserved an even more important space for the innovations of the future than before. Over 5,500 visitors discovered new, patent-pending technologies and smart Industrial 4.0 applications that provide inspiration for the furniture manufacturing in the future. This included:
• New zero-joint technology waveTec ®: In this patented process, the functional layer is melted by microwaves. When heating up the glue, no heating-up time is required and volume heating of stronger functional layers is also possible.
• 3D printing / additive manufacturing: HOMAG tested the combination of slow-moving 3D technology and high-performance milling. The advantages: Less cutting volume and a function-optimized product design.
• Smart Solutions: Here, HOMAG showed the opportunities to optimize production such as an automatic setup of machining parameters by scanning the tool and workpiece or the implementation of predictive maintenance on a tool spindle.
At the end of the tour HOMAG opened an extraordinary view of the “Smart Factory” in a 180 ° degree cinema – the furniture manufacturing of tomorrow.
Tags: batch size 1 plant, CEO of HOMAG Group, digital platform, digital products, InnovationCenter, ligna, outstanding performance, Pekka Paasivaara, software solutions, tapio, wood industry
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