The digitalization of factories and plants as well as the Internet of Things promise new possibilities for the automation industry. In this development, a wide variety of technologies from the field level to the cloud and also across different stages of the value chain must be combined across manufacturers to create tangible added value for customers. The supreme discipline here is that within such an ecosystem, all participants speak the same language and no time-consuming integration is required.

Dunkermotoren has accepted this challenge. At the same time, the drive technology manufacturer has recognized that this cannot be solved by one company alone, but only in conjunction with a partner ecosystem that consists of component manufacturers, software companies, machine builders and integrators. Dunkermotoren has found this partner ecosystem in the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance. The goal of this alliance is to build an interoperable and manufacturer-independent ecosystem that delivers functioning industry 4.0 solutions based on existing standards.

The Open Industry 4.0 Alliance acts as a partnership of leading industrial companies that pragmatically participate in the implementation of cross-vendor industry 4.0 solutions and services for manufacturing facilities and automated warehouses. The alliance was launched in April 2019. Since then, the alliance has grown to more than 40 members with different industrial core competencies and has made further technical advances over the last few months. The founding members include Beckhoff, Endress+Hauser, Hilscher, ifm, KUKA, MULTIVAC, SAP and Voith. The constantly expanding membership includes Balluff, SICK, Pepperl+Fuchs, Gebhardt and Software AG.