It is the purpose of the Road4FAME roadmap to align future research with the specific needs and requirements of European manufacturing businesses. To gain a detailed picture of these needs, Road4FAME consortium members conducted a series of interviews with experts from industry at the Industrial Automation fair which took place in Hannover from April 7-11.

In personal interviews of about 15-30 min duration each, representatives from manufacturing companies as well as solution providers (IT vendors, integrators, etc.) kindly provided their perspectives on the most urgently required IT functionalities of manufacturing companies and anticipated requirement changes in the future.

Interviews were conducted in cooperation with the SmartFactory initiative, which also showcased an impressive example of a future production line and received strong interest by visitors and industry representatives.

(In the picture, from left to right: Dr Jürgen Grotepass of DFKI/Smart Factory initiative, coordinator of a German national Industry-4.0 project; Christian Albrecht of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, coordinator of Road4FAME; Ursula Rauschecker of Fraunhofer IPA, project partner in Road4FAME; Rüdiger Dabelow of DFKI, Managing director of Smart Factory initiative.)