TPT January 2016

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January 2016 73
To avoid falling behind, Volker Treier, deputy head of the
German Chambers of Commerce & Industry, told Mr Webb,
the “Mittelstand must maintain contact with the customer
and not lose out” to software companies that might end up
with valuable market data. Hence Mr Prokop’s worries about
Google and Apple.
‘WheRe SoFtWaRe iS KinG’
In Mr Webb’s view the Germans will enjoy certain advantages
as “the next wave” – machines talking to one another –
gathers strength. He notes that, as distinguished from
computing with its standardised suite of keyboards and USB
connectors, there are no dominant standards in industrial
equipment. That in fact gives the hardware makers – even
small ones like Trumpf – an edge over giants like Google or
Apple.
To seize that opportunity, Trumpf last year quadrupled its
coding staff, to some 25 people. “We recognised that we
needed far greater IT expertise,” Mr Prokop told Businessweek.
“We needed to be able to analyse data.”
Mr Webb observed that, for all of Germany’s concern about
its position in the new industrial economy, Industrie 4.0 “acts
primarily as a cheerleader,” offering little financial help.
Politicians and labour representatives have a strong say in
setting the group’s agenda, focused mainly on sponsoring
research at top universities.
“The US-dominated IIC, by contrast, coordinates trials of new
technologies,” wrote Mr Webb. Two examples are a system
to track handheld tools to ensure their effective use and a
100-gigabit-per-second network to connect machinery. The
results of IIC experiments are shared among the membership,
which has grown to 200 and includes Japan’s Hitachi and
even Germany’s SAP and Siemens.
“The big difference is that Industrie 4.0 is driven by the
government and is unmistakably part of industrial policy,”
said Krzysztof Bledowski, director of economic studies at
the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity & Innovation in
Arlington, Virginia. “[The IIC] is already getting together to do
joint experiments.”
› While the IIC appears to be out in front, Rainer Glatz,
who leads Industrie 4.0 projects at the German machine
makers association VDMA, pointed out that the adoption of
greater connectivity in manufacturing could take decades.
Thus Germany’s approach could lead to greater progress
down the line.
“In the US they want to take lots of small steps as quickly as
possible,” Mr Glatz told Businessweek. “In Germany, the effort
is far more theoretical: Find the model first and then move
toward implementation.”
› For his part, Mr Webb recalled the joke that, for a job to
be taken seriously in Germany it must start with an “e”
and end in “ngineering.” Yet, he wrote, “German officials fret
that, for all their country’s hardware know-how, the economy
is at risk in a world where software is king and factories are
increasingly linked by the Internet.”
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