From 13-16 October, plastics machinery manufacturer Engel is organising its first Engel live e-xperience, a new, virtual and interactive trade fair concept, complete with live exhibits, an online specialist congress and one-on-one meetings with familiar, local contacts and other experts.
With physical events off limits for the foreseeable future, the company is resorting, like so many others, to cyberspace to present the innovations originally planned for Fakuma 2020,
"Even in times of Covid-19, Engel's R&D pipeline is well filled," said Engel CSO Christoph Steger.
Understanding the importance of personal contact, the company will enable visitors to the virtual event to book appointments in advance with their sales contact or a technology expert. During the meetings, visitors will be guided around the exhibits online with the help of the Microsoft Teams video conferencing software.
The seven planned machine exhibits will be running at Engel’s technical centre at its headquarters in Schwertberg.
The format will include an experience zone, where attendees will also be interactively engaged with the exhibits. Targeted at, for example, process technicians, production managers or maintenance staff, appropriate tasks will be set designed to be tackled using the inject 4.0 products from Engel, showing how digitalisation solutions work in a real-life setting. For visitors to the Experience Zone, it’s a taste of what working in a smart factory will look like.
"The Engel live e-xperience is a live event," Steger emphasises. A two-day conference programme is planned, including Q&A opportunities via the chat function during the lecture and a live discussion after. Each lecture will be repeated once. The keynote will be delivered by Stefan Engleder, CEO of Engel, at the start of the event.
Engel is also organising five Expert Talks in which product and technology experts at the company will discuss important issues impacting injection moulding, such as smart machine control, data analytics, digital service concepts, innovative automation solutions and new processing technology. These lectures will offer an overview of the progress to date and discuss - live with the participants - the opportunities opening up as these technologies develop.