Did HANNOVER MESSE 2023 live up to your expectations?

PSI's presence at HANNOVER MESSE 2023 was predominantly focused on Qualicision AI, our artificial intelligence solution, which is integrated into all of PSI's industry software products. In total, we had over 200 highly worthwhile meetings with prospective customers that led to a number of concrete business initiations, and we were able to underline our pioneering role in the field of industrial AI. In this respect, 2023 was a complete success.

The motto of the upcoming HANNOVER MESSE is 'Energize a sustainable industry'. Can you already say which new products you will be featuring at HANNOVER MESSE in April 2024, and on which areas the focus will be?

We will be showcasing the complete portfolio of PSI software products at the fair. That includes solutions for the optimization and management of production sequences and logistics processes, for example in the automotive and steel industries, as well as our portfolio for optimized energy procurement and the efficient and secure operation of infrastructures in the areas of electric power, gas, hydrogen and electromobility. It is in these areas that Qualicision AI, our artificial intelligence software, is used horizontally across all products to boost efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions in our customers' business processes. A specific example in this context is the combination of production control with a needs-based energy algo trader for the purposes of boosting production efficiency and optimizing energy procurement on a real-time basis by means of intelligent software and, overall, to help decarbonize production operations.

Artificial intelligence figures among the trending topics at HANNOVER MESSE. PSI already has AI-based software in its portfolio of offerings. There are a lot of companies in need of information in this regard. Can you provide an advance insight into how AI can revolutionize production and the energy system?

Customers using PSI software have already been benefiting from industrial AI from our company for many years now. From the perspective of our software products, this is therefore a steady progression rather than a revolution, though, for example, the automation of raw-data processing for AI algorithms, referred to as 'qualitative labeling', can quite certainly be regarded as revolutionary. Compared to previous procedures in AI developments, the manual outlay involved in data preparation is reduced dramatically and replaced by what are known as labeling algorithms. That succeeds because we use methods that combine the business process knowledge already coded in the PSI software products with process KPIs and AI expertise. This benefits all PSI customers in the spheres of both production and energy systems. The integration of generative AI into our products will also be an important component in this context. In the future, our software will feature voice interaction capabilities – an advancement that will make for a revolution in use-friendliness.

In our view, the future lies in the seamless integration of AI technologies and industry-specific software products. This means that the path to largely autonomous operational management in all areas of application is foreseeable.