Mechanical and Plant Engineering

"Every third job in Germany depends on production. Even seen against this background the 72 million Euro for production research at the Federal Ministry for Research are not enough by far", according to Dr. Manfred Wittenstein, Honorary PhD Engineering, President of the VDMA*, at the two-day congress ‚Smarter Production’. Flexibility, innovation and cost reduction potentials also rank in mechanical and plant engineering as a key requirements to remaining competitive on the global market and in particular in times of the current economic crisis. Improved automation, manufacturing and collaboration processes, as well as aspects of configuration management, change management or product data management amendment take on increased significance in view of ever shorter product lifecycles and greater cost reductions.