During an exclusive interview, igus CEO Frank Blase expressed satisfaction with a debriefing he held with his staff about the setup and reception of the company's booth at Hannover Messe 2023, the leading international trade fair for industrial technology and advanced automation.
“Whether it was [a customer query about] a plastic gear with a super tight precision or a customer interested in joining us in the iguverse to rent real estate, everything was on topic,” said Blase. “I’m very happy with the depth and width, and that our innovations have found conversation.”
Feedback from attendees and potential customers, particularly at international trade fairs, hold value above and beyond being a proxy for an event’s success.
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Members of the igus event team told Machine Design that colleagues had arrived a month in advance to help set up the booth. Designed around the theme, “Enjoyneering,” the booth was configured to inspire creativity and demonstrate how the company pushes boundaries with cutting-edge solutions, while bringing ease-of-use to product design.
In this video, Blase discusses his vision and plans for targeted market segments and highlights why sustainability efforts are part and parcel of the igus culture.
“Before coming here, most companies would put forward topics of decarbonization, reduction of CO2,” he said. “We also cover the topic here in Hannover. We also chose to focus on additional innovation projects.”
One of those innovation projects was the development of the iguverse (a proprietary version of the metaverse). “Our big goal was and is to give customers a reason to use it other than just maybe the novelty aspect,” Blase said. “Some people have been in the virtual reality and metaverse. Some people that haven’t. For those who haven’t, it’s a novelty.”
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Client feedback has provided validation for further investment. For instance, an offshore oil rig client that designs large cable packages was commissioned to design a cable package but omitted an important beam from the drawings. Had the CAD data and drawings been rendered in the iguverse, explained Blase, the likelihood of the mistake could have been avoided.
Future plans for the virtual platform include offering rental space for small and medium companies. “We have to set this price or a reasonable price so they don’t have to develop what we develop,” Blase said. “They can just rent a piece of real estate, put the machines there, and do the same for their customers.”
Sustainability Theme
As a plastics company, a big part of decarbonization is connected to recycling. For Blase, that means asking: “How can we use and reuse and reuse and reuse and reuse our products?”
He further describes a recent innovation project in which igus engineers successfully harvested waste heat from injection molding machines to heat a large factory hall at the igus head office in Cologne, Germany.
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