ZOOM ON EVENTS
© Geico
2017 Innovation Day: Technology Meets Humanity
1 Figure 1: The headquarters of Geico.
T
he seventh Innovation Day was held in Milan on November 7, 2017. Geico, an international leader in the design and construction of turnkey automated car coating plants, organises this two-year event to present the status of its projects, its technological and cultural strategies, and its future projects to lending and financial institutions (Fig. 1). During this meeting, the innovations brought by Geico in the last few year were discussed: these excellent technological solutions culminated in the environmental sustainability project related to the Energy Independence Day and in the Smart Paintshop project, aimed at bringing the coating sector and the Industry 4.0 together. The first part of the meeting was devoted to environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility. During 2017, in fact, the company has achieved the goal of reducing its energy consumption for coating car body from 900 kWh to 270 kWh set for the Energy Independence Day of 2020. The goal has been reached three years earlier. This is an outstanding achievement, the result of high level engineering innovation, continuous technological research, and
112
N. 48 - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 - international PAINT&COATING magazine
environmental ethics. The second important result announced was related to youth employment and to Geico’s projects called J-Next and Gate Bridge of Pardis Foundation. Both of them embody the deep sense of social responsibility; the first one inside the company the second in the companies of the local community. The second part of the meeting was devoted to technological innovation. Francesco Beraldi, one of Italy’s leading IT experts, the President of Alkemy Tech, O2E and Seolab, a member of the BoD of Talent Garden, ICT Sud and Alkemy SpA, and a partner of Superpartes, introduced the topic. He explained to the guests how digital evolution has enabled to enter the Industry 4.0 era by presenting Smart Paintshop, a project that will revolutionise the car coating systems. This evolution in terms of efficiency, safety, quality, cost saving, and eco-friendliness offers solutions to geolocalise car bodies, safety sensors to prevent malfunctions, Internet of Things solutions to analyse and improve any coating stage in real time, wearable technology for a perfect human-machine