Photo: Copyright: NürnbergMesse / Thomas Geiger

After ECS 2021 was cancelled due to Corona, the coatings industry will meet in Nuremberg from March 28 to March 30.

We visited on Monday and met interesting people and had good conversations. You can tell from the exhibitors as well as from the visitors that everyone is happy that the ECS is taking place "in real life" again and that people are meeting in person and in 3D.

Our impression was that among the raw material manufacturers and the distributors, the topics of efficiency and costs, sustainability and the environment are of great importance for the coating formulations of the present and the future. In this context, end-to-end, holistic digitization, especially in the development and testing process, is an important topic according to our interviewees. Digitization beyond production is still in its infancy in some areas, but a great deal is currently happening in the industry.

We donated €1,500 to the Save The Children organization (https://www.savethechildren.de) today under the impact of the earthquake disaster in Syria and Turkey. We hope that this will help a little bit to provide much needed aid by the relief organizations to the children in the earthquake region.

Lecture at Lacktreff Münsterland on March 16 (online).

On March 16, I spoke to a small but select group about a holistic concept for digitization in the paint and coatings industry.

If people used to like to say that paper is patient, this has been true for several years and still applies to the use of Excel and Word. However, it is important to see that this now shifts the problem of paper filing from the earlier times to the problem of file filing of Office documents on the file system (or Sharepoint servers). Of course, Excel and Word have their raison d'être, but today we very often find "applications" in Excel that, due to the nature of these document formats, are difficult to incorporate into a holistic, digitally-driven process and, above all, are very difficult to evaluate or research.

Using the LISSY Suite as an example, I talked about a typical process in companies that rely heavily on technical sales, application engineering, and research and development. All relevant information, such as the status of projects or discussions with customers, is available here via an app. Additional information can be recorded directly on site and fed directly into the process in the back office - manual transfer from e-mails or attachments is no longer necessary. Stage Gate projects can then be initiated directly from this info, in the course of which development orders with formulation elaboration, the creation of samples and technical testing are carried out. All values and results flow into the company database and are thus available for research and evaluation (lessons learned!) for further use up to transfer to the ERP. Finally, the circle closes again at the customer's site, who can be optimally advised and supported.

With this approach, current questions and, above all, future applications such as statistical evaluations and the feeding of AI algorithms are possible without any problems. One has known this from Google for a few years. Google "simply" digitized everything in databases that was publicly accessible on the Internet, digitally surveying "the real world" and turning its users into valuable data providers. With the development of the smartphone, just about everyone got their hands on a device full of digital sensors to collect data. This then gave rise to applications such as Google Maps, restaurant ratings, traffic flow forecasts and many other useful things. This would never have been possible through "digitization" in Excel and an insular mindset.

An important insight from the subsequent discussion was that, in addition to being very well structured and easy to use, a digitization concept stands and falls with the willingness of users to contribute themselves, their knowledge and their manpower. In addition to the technical and functional level, organizational and employee development is therefore also a central component of digitization.

Many thanks to Marcel Prieto, Patrick Wahl and the VILF district group Münsterland for hosting the event.

See you soon, Mike Bach

Learn more about our LISSY Suite...

Since November 1st, Mohammad has joined our team as a freshly graduated B.Sc. software developer. After Mohammad was already an integral part of our team as a student during his project phase and his bachelor thesis, we are very pleased that we will continue together on the chosen path after his successful graduation.

Welcome to the "real working world" :-).

From left to right: Ruth Winghart, PRISMA, Markus Hahn, Lisa Wollny, Orion Engineered Carbons GmbH

On November 17 and 18 online and in Neu-Isenburg

See and be seen - as always, the VILF Annual Meeting offered a great opportunity to meet interesting people and experience exciting presentations.

We were represented with a stand in the foyer on 17.11., where we met some familiar people and also made new contacts.

The series of lectures began with the topic "Generational change - between change, disruption and continuity". Johanna von Eben-Worlée from Worlée Chemie GmbH spoke in her lecture about how important it is to take the employees along with you when it comes to future topics such as digitalization and company development, and to shape change together as a constant process that leads over mountains and through valleys.

The fact that the topic of "environment, climate, CO2, sustainability" is in the focus of the industry was shown by the lectures on #gogreen. The speakers gave a very good overview of the efforts the industry is making for environmental and climate protection and where the entrepreneurial, but also social challenges lie.

How important the topic of climate change and the immediate, emphatic global action for the complete reduction of CO2 emissions is for all mankind, Prof. Mojib Latif from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and University of Kiel showed very impressively in his closing lecture "After us, the deluge?": "You can't negotiate or compromise with physics".

The evening event in a convivial round of tables, with good food and great musical accompaniment was a nice end to the day

You can find more about the VILF here.

Recipe Development and Lab Approaches - Keeping Both Hands Free...

In this video, you will see the view through the HoloLons' lenses in conjunction with the LISSY Recipe Playground and voice control using keywords.

The "device portal" of the HoloLens allows recording the current view through the glasses to give at least a small impression of the "look & feel". However, due to the recording and the available bandwidth, the LISSY head-up display is somewhat distorted.