Themed "Connected Manufacturing – Digital Production", the conference will examine various uses of MES (manufacturing execution systems). The all-day event will be held on 26 April in Room 3A of the on-site Convention Center. Last year, the conference attracted roughly 300 attendees from the process and discrete manufacturing industries. The highlights of this year’s conference include the midday panel discussion on "Platform-based MES as a Catalyst for Implementing Industry 4.0".

The program of the 10th International MES Conference comprises three sections: the lecture and discussion section starting at 10:30 a.m., the "MES Solutions" Guided Tour starting at 3:30 p.m. and the 10th Anniversary Reception starting at 5:15 p.m. All addresses and lectures will be simultaneously translated into English/German. The opening keynote will be given by Dr. Olaf Sauer, Chairperson of the Information Technology division of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) and head of the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB). Dr. Sauer will be discussing interoperability as the basis for adaptability in tomorrow’s factories. The keynote will be followed by papers on various applications of the platform economy in the process manufacturing industry. Dr. Josef Waltl, Global Segment Lead – Industrial Software at Amazon Webservices, and Volker Burch, Vice President Advanced Technology at iTAC Software AG, will be talking about platform economics and asking the question: "What are the economies of using MES in the cloud?" Following this, Stig Victor Petersen, Vice President Operations at Hamlet Protein Inc., Denmark, will present a paper titled "A Strategy for Realizing Industry 4.0 by means of MES: 7 Key Steps to a Successful Digital Transformation".

After lunch, the conference will resume at 12:45 p.m. with a panel discussion on platform-based MES. The discussion will address the question as to whether it is possible to find a long-term alternative to cloud-based MES solutions for implementing Industry 4.0. It will also provide support for businesses that are uncertain about how they should go about implementing Industry 4.0. The panel participants are: Volkhard Bregulla, Vice President Global Sales Manufacturing, Automotive and IoT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Wolfgang Dedden, Senior Project Manager Manufacturing Intelligence & Solution Design, Bayer AG, Dr. Hartwig Düsing, Sales Director, gbo datacomp GmbH, Andreas Kirsch, Board of Management member, GUARDUS Solutions AG, and Dr. Florian von der Hagen, Director MRO IT Solutions, Lufthansa Industry Solutions AS GmbH. Dr. von der Hagen will be sharing his insights on Industry 4.0 in aviation. "Just as in other sectors, Industry 4.0 is steadily making itself felt in all business processes in the aviation sector," he said. "Automation of hitherto manual processes in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) poses unique challenges. Meeting those challenges involves taking manufacturing execution systems (MES) and adapting them to the dictates of dynamic, unpredictable diagnostic and repair requirements. Lufthansa Industry Solutions specializes in these sorts of challenges and advises companies within and outside the aviation sector on appropriate solutions."

Following the panel discussion, the focus of the program will shift to MES applications in the manufacturing industry. In this section, Rainer Gehring, Director IT & Business Process Management, Scholler Werk GmbH & Co. KG, will address the question as to whether the classic pyramid of automation is still valid. Peter Jonas from Lufthansa Technik AG will talk about MES in aircraft component maintenance, and Andreas Daniel from Buderus Schleiftechnik GmbH will illustrate how his company made the transition to paperless manufacturing.

The conference program will be rounded out by the "MES Solutions" Guided Tour, which will take its participants through the halls of the Digital Factory show, where exhibitors will present MES solutions for process and discrete manufacturing.

The official sponsors of the 10th International MES Conference are GFOS – Gesellschaft f. Organisationsberatung und Softwareentwicklung mbH , GEFASOFT GmbH , Hewlett Packard Enterprise GmbH , HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES , N+P Informationssysteme GmbH and T.CON GmbH & Co.KG .