Apr. 23, 2018 – The winner of this year’s Hermes Award is Endress+Hauser Messtechnik GmbH + Co. KG.
The prestigious industrial technology award was presented to the company by Germany’s Federal Minister of Education and Research Anja Karliczek at the opening ceremony for Hannover Messe on April 22.
“‘From small business to global player’ is the success story behind many of the exhibitors at Hannover Messe, and this also applies to Endress+Hauser,” said Dr. Jochen Köckler, chairman of the managing board at Deutsche Messe. “The award-winning product makes a major contribution to the deployment of Industry 4.0 throughout the process industry.”
Endress+Hauser received the award for a hygienic compact thermometer featuring a self-calibrating sensor for process temperature measurements that is designed to meet stringent safety and quality specifications for sectors such as the food and pharmaceutical industries. Endress+Hauser explains that the temperature of the sensor is calibrated automatically using a physical fixed point based on the Curie temperature of an internal reference sensor integrated in the sensor. According to the family-owned company, the fully automated inline calibration of the temperature sensor is audit-proof and facilitates regular recalibration without additional processes or system downtime.
“Smart sensor technology is a major driver in the next stage of Industry 4.0. With the number of sensors increasing dramatically in a smart factory, audit-proof self-calibration of sensors without system downtime will become a key factor for economic success. This is where Endress+Hauser’s innovative product comes into play, making an important contribution to the continuous process verification and quality control during production that we are aiming for with Industry 4.0,” said jury chairman Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster, CEO of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
Other nominees for the award are: Alpha Laser (Puchheim, Germany), GBS German Bionic Systems GmbH (Augsburg, Germany), TH Ingolstadt/Continental AG (Ingolstadt/Hannover, Germany) and Upskill (Washington, D.C.).
