Van of Nerds

As part of our van full of nerds tour through southern Germany to study Industry 4.0, we also visited two companies, Kärcher and Siemens. Siemens is probably well known to all of you. We went to their Amberg plant where they make programmable logic controllers.  Kärcher is a smaller company that makes pressure washers and industrial cleaning machines. Let me show you what we found.

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The first plant we visited as our van full of nerds touring southern Germany to study Industry 4.0 was the Bosch wafer fab RtP1 in Reutlingen. Quite impressive. Let me show you what we found:

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As one of the stops on our van full of nerds touring southern Germany to study Industry 4.0, we also visited Trumpf. However, we didn’t go to the main plant in Ditzingen but to a much-smaller plant in Gerlingen that makes stamping tools. I have heard a lot of good things about Trumpf Gerlingen, and wanted to see if it is true. Let’s find out:

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In this second post of the series on our van full of nerds touring southern Germany to study Industry 4.0, we will look at ABB Stotz-Kontakt in Heidelberg. Quite an impressive plant! Let me show you:

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In 2019 I organized a non-commercial Industry 4.0 tour for some friends through my university, the Karlsruhe University of Applied Science. For the first week in July 2019, we rented a van and toured southern Germany. We visited fourteen different locations in five days to understand the current state of Industry 4.0 in Germany. Almost all of these locations were Industry 4.0 award-winning enterprises. However, our assessment of Industry 4.0 often differed from these awards. Since we all come from the lean corner, we often have a different outlook on things than people who specialize in Industry 4.0. Let me give you an overview of our tour:

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