Editorial materialfluss 1-2/2018
Here are the robots
More than 230 of the approximately 1,500 exhibitors at the upcoming LogiMAT trade fair have also entered their names in the "Warehouse and Production Control / Robotics" section of the exhibitor directory. That's quite a lot. So here are the robots, one could proclaim in a variation of the classic Kraftwerk song, "Die Roboter", with the most serious and bleak simile possible.
"The German robotics industry will continue to set records."
Because almost 50 years after the song was released, the figures are increasingly proving the visionaries from Düsseldorf right: (still) small industrial robot providers such as Mobile Industrial Robots are tripling their turnover figures within a year and doubling the number of their employees. One example of many. The German robotics and automation industry will have broken records again in 2017 (final figures are still pending) and reach the 14 billion euro mark. Large intralogistics companies are increasingly entering the robotics market with acquisitions or participations, but the reverse is also true, of course, as we saw in 2014 with the takeover of Swisslog by KUKA. For intralogistics, this means that in addition to the Industry 4.0 drumbeat, the robot boom also offers huge potential for innovation and, as a result, efficiency. I am very curious to see when the famous "reach into the box" will succeed and revolutionize classic order picking. For your personal preparation for LogiMAT, I would advise you to think about robots in good time. Because as the song mentioned at the beginning says: "We're charging our battery, now we're full of energy!" We'll all need it to walk through ten halls in March as effortlessly as possible!
Best regards as usual, your
Martin Schrüfer Managing Editor-in-Chief [email protected]
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