EDITOR’S LETTER
Richiedi la versione in italiano a info@ipcm.it
Alessia Venturi Editor-in-chief Direttore Responsabile
Digital transformation has been accomplished.
W
e have proof of this every day, when visiting companies for our articles: there is no longer any management that does not choose the Industry 4.0 route. From single coating booths to whole plants, digitisation and automation have found application in all European business models. Industry 4.0 generated 13 billion of investments in one year (2017) In Italy alone1, far beyond the already optimistic forecasts of the Italian government that launched the related investment incentives. The purchase of machinery, hi-tech equipment, robots, artificial intelligence devices, and digital solutions to optimise production has gone hand in hand with the development of clusters of firms that combine their skills to develop applications, software, tutorials, and online training courses offered through special buying platforms, actual digital market places for the manufacturing industry. Once again, the automotive sector has acted as a driving force: long since dominated by robotics in all production phases, it is now turning digital solutions into maintenance assistants, artificial inspectors of coating anomalies, and simulators used to define specific process parameters for each product to be processed. On May 17, during the last Open House of Dürr AG, the world market leader in the production of car coating systems, we have seen the future – above all, the first Automated Guided Vehicles (AVG) for the transport of bodies and materials from one station to another, an innovation stemming from the tendency to design painting plants no longer as a production line but rather as a series of modular workstations. Custom coating application on bodies with no overspray and no need for masks was even more surprising, although it is already going to be outdated by the pro version of this technology, which is currently being tested and will soon offer the possibility of coating logos and lettering in a similar way to digital printing. What you have in your hands is one of the most beautiful and content-rich issues that we have produced in these first ten years of business at EOS Mktg&Communication, the publisher of ipcm®. I would call it a record issue, in terms of both content quality and advertising spaces. There was no better way to celebrate our first attainment than by doing our job (although the actual party is coming soon). We founded our company on the desire to work, on professionalism, on the enthusiasm and the will to offer a completely new product in terms of form, content, multichannel and international distribution, and visibility – not a clone, but something new and fresh able to reflect the world industry’s two main focusses: internationalisation and digitisation. In this issue, including a content-rich special report on coating technologies for the automotive and transport sectors, we tell the innovation stories of several prominent companies from various countries, united by the passion, professionalism, and know-how of those who have contributed to achieving such innovations. We tell about the coating sector. Because communicating is the most beautiful journey. 1 From an article by Luca Orlando, Il Sole 24 Ore, May 14, 2019
international PAINT&COATING magazine - MAY/JUNE 2019 - N. 57
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