3 Key Takeaways from Hannover Messe 2024

Over 130K global manufacturing experts attended this year’s Hannover Messe International trade show in Germany to discuss manufacturing best practices, data and AI, and next steps in their digitalization journeys. While Cognite did not get to talk to everyone (as much as we would have liked to!), we distilled the following key takeaways from hundreds of conversations, demos, meetings, and more.

1. Displaying complex industrial data is the new “must-have” for high-performance operations teams.

Being able to look at and chart historian data and leverage owned domain expertise has never been enough to make consistent, dependable operational decisions. However, the start-to-finish workflow for triaging an asset alert and finding the root cause is increasingly disjointed and time-intensive. As Celanese, a North American Chemical Manufacturer, puts it, “Oftentimes it takes more time to pull data together from multiple sources than it does to analyze them and understand what’s going on.”

Engineers and subject matter experts are desperate for a more seamless, software-enabled way to quickly analyze time series data AND connect it to asset performance, previous work order history, P&IDs, similar events, and other key RCA data. When this information comes together intuitively, it accelerates and improves the decision-making process and can contribute millions of dollars of incremental uptime and reliability.

What can you do? Watch the latest demo to discover how Cognite facilitates root cause analysis in a new way by combining structured and unstructured data.

2. Industrial DataOps is top of mind for decision-makers; market imitators are still in the slideware phase.

In a dramatic departure from previous conferences, this year, Cognite spent less time explaining Industrial DataOps and why it’s valuable than we did showing what use cases you can solve quickly and at scale with a proper industrial data foundation. What does this mean? The market understanding of foundational data management is maturing quickly.

With this maturing market, new and existing vendors are introducing offerings with similar Industrial DataOps messaging but a wide spectrum of software maturity; everyone can agree that the industrial data problem is critical to solve for long-term success. But while the messaging on the surface is becoming similar, consultant-heavy slide-ware solutions may not be an ideal approach for many manufacturers. As the original provider of Industrial DataOps Software, Cognite Data Fusion, since 2018, Cognite is both excited to see how our original messaging persists but advise manufacturers to be wary of solutions that haven’t been tried and tested with real industrial requirements.

What can you do? Learn more about industrial dataops in our ground-breaking definitive guide from 2021, and learn more about what makes Cognite different.

3. Pressure is building on digital teams and use cases - many are struggling for an appropriate place to start…AND the mechanism to scale quickly

Almost every digital transformation lead we spoke to had a list of digital use cases prioritized by their business groups and executive governance committees. But it was clear across the board that there was division in implementing these use cases for rapid time to value and with the future in mind. For example, building organization-specific digital platforms themselves could guarantee the latter, but could take years to implement and return value. Off-the-shelf solutions on the other hand may offer quick wins, but have limited avenues for scaling across assets and sites.

This leaves many wondering where to start: i.e., what is the ideal overlap of source data, infrastructure, and end-user experience that enables digital teams to solve the most operational use cases with the least effort? This is where Cognite’s experience comes into play, having evaluated and delivered industrial SaaS to key operators in manufacturing, energy, and more.

What can you do? Discover Cognite’s new QuickStart offering, which combines several structured and unstructured data sources to solve key exploration-based use cases and set up long-term digital success.

Now, having participated in Hannover Messe for the past three years, it’s been exciting for Cognite to see how manufacturing leaders have come to embrace the need for smarter digital strategy and foundational data and AI platforms in order to realize next-gen operations. It’s become equally surprising to see how many of our previous event takeaways evolve or stay the same year after year. Which do you think will change the most?

What next? Contact us to see a demo and get started on your project!