Interpack 2017

Inter­pack is the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al trade fair for pack­aging tech­no­logy and machinery and is held every 3 years at the Düs­sel­dorf exhib­i­tion cen­ter. It rep­res­ents the com­plete value chain. In 2017, approx­im­ately 2,900 exhib­it­ors were joined by more than 170,000 vis­it­ors from May 4 to 10.

In 2017, we had the oppor­tun­ity to present our then still very young idea of a self-learn­ing assist­ance sys­tem at the trade fair stand of the Ger­man Engin­eer­ing Fed­er­a­tion (VDMA). In this con­text, we were also fin­an­cially sup­por­ted by the VDMA with the cre­ation of a video about our vis­ion. Since we did not want to shoot an anim­ated film, but a real film, the search for a suit­able loc­a­tion for the shoot was our biggest chal­lenge. The video shoot on dis­rup­tions in the pro­duc­tion pro­cess was of course not pos­sible in real pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. This is where our long-stand­ing part­ner GEA Food Solu­tions GmbH came to our res­cue. In the GEA tech­nic­al cen­ter in Kempten, employ­ees and test products were made avail­able to us for a whole day in order to shoot our film. The res­ult can be admired here.

In a butcher’s store, there are repeated pro­duc­tion dis­rup­tions in the pack­aging of salami slices as a res­ult of leak­ing pack­aging. The cause of the dis­turb­ances can only be found by exper­i­enced oper­at­ors. The assist­ance sys­tem registers and stores this valu­able exper­i­ence know­ledge. Since the assist­ance sys­tem learns to recog­nize con­di­tions and mal­func­tions, it can pro­act­ively present the digit­ized know­ledge to less exper­i­enced employ­ees in the event of a sim­il­ar mal­func­tion in this or oth­er plants.

We had an excep­tion­ally excit­ing trade show and many inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions. While the major­ity of our vis­it­ors dis­missed our idea as a “nice, but com­pletely unreal­ist­ic gim­mick from research”, oth­er con­ver­sa­tions have developed into long-term, trust­ing partnerships.

At Inter­pack 2020 (May 7 – 13, 2020), we will once again be allowed to exhib­it at the VDMA booth togeth­er with the Fraunhofer IVV Dresden. We are very much look­ing for­ward to being able to show in the same place that a pro­to­type, a com­pany and an extraordin­ary team have emerged from the “unreal­ist­ic gim­mick” with­in 3 years.