Showcase of a high-tech industry

With its 15th event, LogiMat, International Trade Fair for Distribution, Material Handling and Information Flow, is celebrating "a small anniversary" this year, according to trade fair director Peter Kazander.

"In this context, LogiMat was shaped by almost a decade and a half of technology development, which has been characterized by such rapid upheavals and an enormous increase in the importance of intralogistics as hardly any period before."

In particular, developments in information and communication technology, sensor technology, image capture, automation and robotics now characterize a standard that seemed conceivable to few at the time of the first LogiMat in 2003.

"At the first LogiMat am, we had hot discussions about RFID implementation"

recalls Prof. Michael ten Hompel, Executive Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML).

"The Internet of Things or Industry 4.0 were still a distant vision back then. Today, we have the technology in our hands to make the dreams we had back then come true."

According to ten Hompel, LogiMat has consistently accompanied this development over the years.

"More than that, it has become the platform for that change."

Since LogiMat opened its doors for the first time in 2003, the trade fair has developed from an initially rather regional trade fair into the most important German trade fair,

"but probably also the most important European trade fair for the intralogistics sector developed".

states Prof. Karl-Heinz Wehking, IFT Institute for Materials Handling and Logistics at the University of Stuttgart.