BERLIN, April 17 (Xinhua) -- Germany's leading trade fair for mechanical and electrical engineering kicked off on Monday in Hannover, with the theme of "Industrial Transformation - Making the Difference."
More than 4,000 companies will present solutions for the "production and energy supply of the future," at the Hannover Messe fair, its organizers said. Main topics of the fair include automation, artificial intelligence, hydrogen technologies and carbon-neutral production.
"Only by weaving these technologies together will it be possible to secure our prosperity sustainably while pursuing climate change mitigation," said Jochen Koeckler, chairman of the Managing Board of Deutsche Messe AG.
Besides Germany and this year's partner country Indonesia, most of the exhibitors come from China, Italy, Türkiye and the United States. Germany is represented by global players such as Siemens and Bosch, as well as medium-sized companies, startups and renowned research institutes such as Fraunhofer.
Regarding digitalization and automation of production, Germany and its neighboring countries Austria and Switzerland are "clearly behind China, the UK and the USA and the gap is growing," said the fair's organizers.
A study by Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, and IT consulting firm MHP, shows that only around 44 percent of all production processes are automated at companies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. Meanwhile, in China the figure is 69 percent, according to the study.
