Tech­nol­o­gy leader SCHUNK pre­sent­ed itself pub­licly for the first time on four inten­sive trade show days at auto­mat­i­ca with the new claim “Hand in hand for tomor­row”. It pre­sent­ed cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy from tool­hold­ing and work­hold­ing, grip­ping tech­nol­o­gy and automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy as well as its com­pe­tence as an appli­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­al. In addi­tion to the pre­sen­ta­tion of inno­v­a­tive prod­uct tech­nolo­gies, one thing was more impor­tant than ever before: exchang­ing ideas.

”Stan­dard­iza­tion makes process­es sim­pler and com­po­nents more inter­change­able. This usu­al­ly also reduces the price-relat­ed entry thresh­old.“

Thomas Ret­zlaff
Vice Pres­i­dent Part­ner Devel­op­ment and Ecosys­tems at Wan­del­bots

Round table

A dis­cus­sion among experts, which brought togeth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from a wide range of automa­tion fields, pro­vid­ed the frame­work for this exchange. In the round­table led by Armin Bar­nitzke, edi­tor-in-chief of the trade jour­nal Automa­tion­sprax­is, star­tups, robot man­u­fac­tur­ers, sys­tem inte­gra­tors and plat­form providers dis­cussed the effects of the cur­rent change in automa­tion with SCHUNK under the mot­to “Enable Automa­tion”. Demand is grow­ing and tech­nol­o­gy is becom­ing increas­ing­ly sim­ple and acces­si­ble through dig­i­tal­iza­tion and mod­u­lar­iza­tion.

The par­tic­i­pants agreed: in future, the focus has to be more on cus­tomers and their needs. This new idea is already being lived out in SCHUNK‘s CoLabs, as SCHUNK COO Johannes Ket­ter­er explained: “The sole pur­pose of our CoLabs is to make automa­tion pos­si­ble.“

”Chil­dren are already learn­ing how to use robots at school. This is cre­at­ing a new user group for us.“

Kat­ja But­ter­weck
Incu­ba­tor Man­ag­er & Glob­al Prod­uct Spe­cial­ist at ABB

Dif­fer­ent approach­es

The con­cept of mak­ing the exchange of ideas as eas­i­ly acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble can also be seen in the busi­ness mod­el of automa­tion plat­forms such as Unchained Robot­ics, whose CEO Mladen Mil­ice­vic was also part of the round­table.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pants includ­ed Kat­ja But­ter­weck, Incu­ba­tor Man­ag­er & Glob­al Prod­uct Spe­cial­ist at ABB, Dirk Engel­brecht, CEO of the andugo knowl­edge plat­form, Dr. Rüdi­ger Brock­mann, CTO and CSO of Zelt­wanger, and Thomas Ret­zlaff, Vice Pres­i­dent Part­ner Devel­op­ment and Ecosys­tems at Wan­del­bots.

”Automa­tion must not be a priv­i­lege for experts, but must become sim­pler, more acces­si­ble and more trans­par­ent.“

Dirk Engel­brecht
CEO of the knowl­edge plat­form andugo

The round table ini­ti­at­ed by SCHUNK not only impres­sive­ly demon­strat­ed which approach­es the dif­fer­ent play­ers are pur­su­ing, but also above all that in the future, coop­er­a­tion will be the num­ber one pre­req­ui­site for suc­cess­ful automa­tion.

 

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Auto­mate in Detroit

At the automa­tion show­case in North Amer­i­ca in June revolved around for­ward-look­ing solu­tions for robot­ics and AI. SCHUNK pre­sent­ed new grip­ping sys­tem solu­tions that are pio­neers in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and safe­ty.

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AMB Stuttgart

The who‘s who of the met­al­work­ing indus­try met at AMB in Stuttgart from Sep­tem­ber 13 to 17, 2022. SCHUNK show­cased automa­tion and dig­i­tal­iza­tion options for machin­ing as well as new devel­op­ments in the field of sus­tain­able, resource-effi­cient clamp­ing devices. The low-main­te­nance ROTA‑M flex 2+2 man­u­al chuck could be seen live for the first time.

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IMTS in Chica­go

The ori­gins of IMTS, which took place in Chica­go from Sep­tem­ber 9 to 14, 2022, date back to 1927. Near­ly 1,300 vis­i­tors filled the halls of McCormick Place this year, a record num­ber of whom also vis­it­ed the SCHUNK booth.