At the end of September, visitors walking into the Innovation Trade Fair organized by Verena Mayer and Jens Trabert (both of Technology & Innovation, T&I), might have thought they had been transported into a large exhibition hall. A total of 34 stands awaited them. There were clusters of people everywhere, gesturing, discussing, explaining, and asking questions.
For years, the R&D community at Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) has met once a year at an R&D conference to gather information and promote knowledge-sharing. “Marketplaces” – where individual projects were presented – have been a fixture at these conferences. But the time available for tours was limited and the exhibition was reserved for conference participants.
There were major differences this time: A considerably larger Innovation Trade Fair was held the day before the conference and extended over nearly an entire day. And it didn’t take place in a conference venue but rather in the Weinheim Industrial Park. For the first time, employees from throughout FST and visitors from other Freudenberg units had the chance to gather information there.
Visitors could also attend the trade fair virtually if they so desired – using one of the five “Double 3” telepresence robots, no less. Thanks to a screen at the upper end of a telescoping rod, exhibitors and virtual guests could speak face-to-face at a round standing table as they visited the trade fair virtually, even though the guests were sitting at desks thousands of kilometers away.
The stands were devoted to five themes: hydrogen, innovation promotion, electric mobility, and innovations in the Divisions, not to mention materials and processes. The topics were sustainable materials, second-generation heat shields, fire resistant materials for batteries, automatic visual inspection, product lifecycle management (PLM) and project management. In short, the topics were wide-ranging, and the number of visitors interested in them was just as impressive.
