Hannover Fair 2011: Day 2 Report

During the press conference, Siemens PLM announced its Teamcenter Mobility mobile device (read iPad) application. Actually, I've been beta testing it. Really cool. You can read more here at Automation World.Next stop was a Siemens booth tour. The booth (stand in German) must encompass a quarter of the hall (OK, a slight exaggeration, but it's huge). The tour was conducted in English by Siegfried Russwurm, CEO of the Industry Sector and member of the board of Siemens AG. Impressive. He knew the products and applications and was eloquent. Next stop was Phoenix Contact. They had a big wall of highlighted new products. Among them an intelligent UPS, new energy monitoring/data acquisition product, 3G industrial modem line, WirelessHart modules, slice single-channel fieldbus modules, a number of safety products and a remote lightning detection system to reduce field trips by maintenance personnel to remote wind power farms. Phoenix Contact has also organized engineering teams to assemble solution packages from it myriad product lineup to help various customers solve specific problems. A tour of the B&R Automation booth (including the Ethernet Power Link booth) discussed energy efficiency (definitely an overall show theme) and its "open safety" initiative. We shot a video explanation of the system that will be posted in the morning (I'm writing this Wednesday morning German time, but around midnight EDT).Continuing the energy efficiency theme, at the Lenze booth we saw a motor designed specifically to work with variable frequency drives, actually at 120 Hz. It is highly efficient at a significantly smaller size--useful for machine builders.We also shot a video of Lenze Americas President Chuck Edwards explaining Lenze's coordinated motion demo. (Also posted at Automation World by the time you read this.) It was a very busy day at the fair. I heard that it was the best attendance in 11 years. Hopefully a good sign. I stopped by the ISA100 Wireless Compliance Institute booth. They had announced Flowserve as a new member and demonstrated a "plug fest" of products from different companies working over the ISA100 wireless standard--including a control valve. Time to head back to the show. More later.