AI Champions Baden-Württemberg: Festo wins
Festo's AI solution "Intelligent pneumatic runtime monitoring" was honoured at the "AI Champions Baden-Württemberg" awards ceremony of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economics, Labour and Housing on 11 August.
Thousands of pneumatic clamping systems are used in production lines in the automotive industry, for tasks like holding individual parts in place during welding in the body shop. In the future, software from Festo with artificial intelligence from Resolto will identify whether the clamps are still working correctly or would be better replaced with an eye to predictive maintenance. It does this exclusively using the signals from the valves and the end positions of the actuators, which are available anyway. In this way expensive breakdowns can be avoided.
This AI solution from Festo convinced the competition jury and also Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economic Affairs, Employment and Housing in Baden-Württemberg, who for the first time awarded the title of "AI Champions Baden-Württemberg" to business-related research institutes, small and medium-sized as well as large companies from Baden-Württemberg for their outstanding solutions in the field of AI. Dr. Thilo Streichert, Head of Development Embedded Software, and Dr. Dominic Kraus, Product Management and Business Development, accepted the award on behalf of the company via live transmission.
Festo Management Board member for Product and Technology Management Dr. Frank Melzer was via livestream switched on from vacation: "Festo aims to be the innovation leader and therefore the preferred automation partner for its customers worldwide. As artificial intelligence is the key technology of the future, our focus is on the further development of decentralised, autonomous systems and artificial intelligence. As early as 2018, we acquired the AI specialist Resolto and have been steadily advancing the fields of analytics and artificial intelligence. AI will have an enormous impact on our product portfolio, for example by enabling AI algorithms to be integrated into the cloud as well as directly into Festo components. I am therefore very pleased and particularly proud of this award and that we were able to convince the jury with our AI solution".
Video of the virtual Award Ceremony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM83gq5bt90
More information about the competition:
https://www.wirtschaft-digital-bw.de/en/
Festo is a global player and an independent family-owned company with headquarters in Esslingen am Neckar, Germany. Festo has set standards in industrial automation technology and technical education ever since its establishment, thereby making a contribution to sustainable development of the environment, the economy and society. The company supplies pneumatic and electrical automation technology to 300,000 customers of factory and process automation in over 35 industries. Digitalization, AI and the LifeTech sector with medical technology and laboratory automation are becoming increasingly important. The products and services are available in 176 countries. With about 20,600 employees in over 250 branch offices in around 60 countries worldwide, Festo achieved a turnover of around €3.65 billion in 2023. Each year around 7% of this turnover is invested in research and development. In this learning company, 1.5 % of turnover is invested in basic and further training. Festo Didactic SE is a leading provider of technical education and training and offers its customers worldwide comprehensive digital and physical learning solutions in the industrial environment.
