ACHEMA 2022

Finally back: The ACHEMA! From August 22 to 26, 2022, more than 2,200 exhibitors presented innovative new products at the world's leading trade fair for the process industry. In total, companies from over 50 countries were represented at ACHEMA in Frankfurt am Main – and eschbach was present as an exhibitor too!

Efficiency and safety in production plants stands and falls with a functioning Plant Process Management. And so the standard software Shiftconnector^® met with lively interest among the visitors.

eschbach showed how the innovative Enterprise Platform enables interactive plant management and at the same time transparent, secure communication between shift teams.

Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) and Continuous Improvement round off the advantages of Shiftconnector^®. This is how numerous companies around the world are already making the leap into future-oriented digital transformation. eschbach's CEO Andreas Eschbach reported on the potential of Industry 5.0 and the interface between people and machines.

Why is Industry 5.0 so important?

Andreas Eschbach: The topic of Industry 5.0 is currently attracting a lot of interest and illustrates not only how important human-to-human communication is in the process industry, but also how much potential it has. The optimum for each company is different. All in all, the human factor in the production process is currently becoming more important. And this is precisely what is not adequately reflected in the concept of Industry 4.0. Especially in times of a crisis, companies need reliable resilience: the human component. This is precisely where Industry 5.0 comes in: a stronger symbiosis between humans and machines. So the question of whether a company has already completed the transformation to Industry 4.0 is not primarily relevant. It is more about the fact whether the human factor has already been integrated in the process. With Shiftconnector® and our Plant Process Management, we can make a major contribution to the digital transformation.

How can companies adapt to current developments?

Andreas Eschbach: Topics such as rising energy costs and the opportunities offered by a CO₂-free industry are omnipresent, and not just at ACHEMA 2022. One sticking point: the new challenges make numerous changes in the process industry inevitable. For example, replacing Natural Gas with other forms of energy means major investments, often initiated by the Engineering. This also changes how the plants are operated. After the conversion process, the plants have to be brought back to an optimal and stable performance state. In this phase, the operations team plays an important role: Because with change processes, there is usually an initial increase in process disruptions. This is precisely where we provide support to bring overall plant efficiency back to a good level more quickly. We have noticed clearly with our customers that good communication, which helps to make process disturbances disappear quickly, and a good exchange of information are immanent on the way to climate neutrality and to mastering the new challenges.

What distinguishes eschbach and Shiftconnector^® in particular?

Andreas Eschbach: The deep understanding of the process industry: Our applications are particularly user-friendly. We combine communication and the level of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in a user-friendly way. As a result, our OEE software achieves a high level of user acceptance. Furthermore, our performance measurement – for fully continuous processes as well as for batch plants – makes eschbach a strong partner. The ioPerformance module shows exactly where performance is lost. In this way, we combine human knowledge from the process and machine data. This is exactly where we meet the opportunities of Industry 5.0 and drive the digital transformation together with companies in the process industry.