The VDMA is reporting a decline of 2% for both 2019 and 2020. What are the reasons for this?

Christian Wolf: There are sectors in the German mechanical engineering industry that are continuing to grow. However, the automotive-related mechanical engineering sector in particular is experiencing a decline, with the machine tool industry being hit particularly hard. The automotive industry is having a significant, albeit delayed, effect on mechanical engineering.

The VDMA expects a decline of 2% in 2020. Turck expects growth of 5%.

Christian Wolf: This shows that we are not only active in automotive mechanical engineering. We expect the food and nutrition industry to continue to grow. We also see opportunities for growth in the mobile machinery sector as well as in logistics and process automation. The chemical industry has stabilized, oil and gas is also growing reasonably again and the pharmaceutical industry does not seem to be affected by any of this. We also believe that automotive will recover, but the question is whether this will be felt by the end of 2020. All in all, we believe that growth is definitely realistic.

What are the three biggest trends in production automation?

Christian Wolf: Clearly the convergence of IT and OT. I am convinced that the world of automation no longer ends with control technology. The automation pyramid no longer ends in PLCs, but in an MES or ERP world. In my view, this is the biggest trend. Another trend is that hardware will increasingly be customized by software in the future. This means that the mechanical adaptation of an application is no longer relevant, but that this is increasingly done via the software. And in my opinion, this is also the biggest challenge for us automation specialists: having enough resources and investment to develop in this direction.

Will the classic PLC become superfluous?
Christian Wolf: Yes and no. A PLC will always be justified, but I believe that the relevance of the classic large PLC is decreasing - this can already be observed. Microprocessors already have enough computing power to manage a large volume of data in a decentralized manner. Intelligence is already migrating to robust end devices, which are already implementing many control tasks directly on site and thus increasingly relieving the burden on higher-level control systems. The fact that more and more sensors can be connected directly in the field via IP67 I/O modules and that edge computing is becoming more widespread will also lead to a reduction in the importance of a traditional PLC.