On March 31, 2025 as part of the traditional Hannover Messe opening tour, acting federal chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz visited Beckhoff Automation, a company headquartered in Verl, Germany. He was accompanied by Stéphane Dion, Canada’s special envoy for Europe and the European Union. Canada is this year’s partner country for Hannover Messe. Hans Beckhoff, managing director and owner of Beckhoff Automation, presented his company and its comprehensive expertise in the field of software and artificial intelligence.
This year, one of the themes of Hannover Messe is “Shaping the future with technology”. Beckhoff Automation has been a pioneer in the field of PC-based control technology for 45 years. With its revolutionary futuristic technology, the company regularly pushes the performance limits of automation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the high-tech company’s booth in Hanover again this year to see the current applications for artificial intelligence in an industrial environment.
The federal chancellor was accompanied by a delegation of around 50 guests including Stephen Weil, the minister president of Lower Saxony, and Belit Onay, the mayor of Hanover and around 100 journalists.
Hans Beckhoff warmly welcomed this eminent delegation. He then explained the broad spectrum of PC-based control and drive technology: “We manufacture sophisticated high-tech products that are developed by a real hive of the brightest minds working together within our company. It is our job to develop products and automate production processes so that they consume fewer raw materials and less energy than in the past.”
The Beckhoff TwinCAT control software plays a central role in powerful automation solutions. It transforms almost every PC-based system into a real-time controller and, with its modular structure, unites all the necessary control functions, including PLC, motion control, machine safety, measurement technology, image processing and artificial intelligence. AI in particular opens up immense potential, for example in developing machines and systems faster and more efficiently. TwinCAT CoAgent, the powerful Beckhoff tool for AI-supported engineering, is crucial here. TwinCAT CoAgent is a personal digital assistant for engineers that revolutionises the entire engineering workflow. Chancellor Scholz was able to see this in person, and by entering a simple prompt in TwinCAT CoAgent he created a control programme that made a Beckhoff XPlanar mover hover in a circle. The federal chancellor and canadian minister were impressed. Hans Beckhoff stated: “Smart implementation of artificial intelligence provides both our customers and us with a crucial competitive advantage. We have already seen an increase of 10 to 30% in terms of engineering efficiency across various projects”
New automation technology from Beckhoff comprises the following product segments: industrial PCs, I/O and fieldbus components, drive technology, automation software and control cabinet-free automation.
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The intelligent transport system, XPlanar from Beckhoff provided the basis for an innovative system concept allowing the specialists at Automation NTH to reduce the space requirement of an assembly machine for medical diagnostic devices by a factor of 10.
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