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July 30, 2025, Nanjing - Phoenix Contact China, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and MPDV jointly organized the “Thoughtful Digital Factory” on-site practical seminar at Phoenix Contact Nanjing Smart Factory. The chairmen of 18 companies from the automotive, medical, food, and equipment manufacturing sectors gathered at the industry's “lighthouse factory” to explore the golden rule of balance between tools and people in digital transformation.

Phoenix Contact China President Mr. Gu Opening Declaration 

“Over the past 30 years, our China plants have been the outstanding results of globalization at the headquarters. Today, we are starting a second venture to make China a strategic pillar of globalization!”

• Pillar practice: full replication of China's digitalization experience in Mexican factories
• Core concept: lean × automation × digitalization = trinity of iterative engines
• Future declaration: "There is no end to the Smart Factory - only a journey of continuous evolution!"

SFK IIoT Hub in Kunshan (China) was founded by Smart Factory (Kunshan) Co., Ltd. and has the most modern factory environment with 38 companies on over 40,000 sqm workshop area, involving all aspects of the production process, providing a variety of application scenarios for IIoT applications. In total 20 companies and institutions including MPDV, VDMA, WAGO and BALLUFF as founding partners built the largest Sino-foreign cooperative Industry 4.0 laboratory, allowing international and Chinese companies to integrate and demonstrate their technologies in the field of Industry 4.0 in a real production environment. The SFK Industrial IoT Center creates a diverse ecosystem that enables all stakeholders in Industry 4.0 to contribute to and benefit from the Technology Center, creating an innovative environment for all types of activities in the Industrial IoT/Industry 4.0 space, from research to sample demonstrations to qualification training.

MPDV will use the SFK IIoT Hub to do social networking, promote products and solutions as well as to gain sales leads and attract talent.

Other activities include:

• Since July regulary posting articles on Smart Factroy Kunshan WeChat public channel.
• A half-day MPDV-specific workshop “Increase productivity with MES” in October 2023.
• 30 minutes keynote speech at the VDMA "Industry Future Fit Conference".
• Series of webinars starting in March 2024 focussing on "How to get started with MES?".
• Setting-up a live HYDRA system by end of Q2, 2024 at one of the production companies on the SFK Campus.

On November 17th, MPDV was invited to participate in the "Facing the Future: VDMA Industry Conference" as a keynote speaker to share the best practices of "Smart Factory for Manufacturing Excellence".

The future is unpredictable, and only by summarizing past experiences can we better face the future. As a global leading supplier of intelligent manufacturing information systems, MPDV has been deeply cultivating in the field of manufacturing information technology for nearly 50 years and has accumulated rich practical experience. In view of this, VDMA invited MPDV to introduce the best practices of manufacturing enterprises in building smart factories step by step, and help enterprises clarify "what is smart factory, how to build smart factory, and how to apply smart factory to realize manufacturing excellence".

In this keynote speech, MPDV experts used the example of a manufacturing enterprise's informationization construction history for more than 10 years to elaborate the real goal of smart factory for manufacturing enterprises: to achieve manufacturing excellence. The degree of achieving manufacturing excellence can be measured and evaluated by complying with the manufacturing management performance indicator "VDMA66412-1". MPDV experts said that it is impossible to achieve manufacturing excellence overnight, and it is roughly necessary to go through the process of "systematization of the system, rapid scheduling of resources, in-depth integration of information technology and automation, and optimization of the external supply chain based on the internal supply chain".

In addition, MPDV experts introduced the smart factory implementation methodology of "value stream analysis to identify pain points, system planning based on the 4 phases of manufacturing excellence and building a management system for continuous improvement".

The actual case of this manufacturing company graphically describes the 5-step method of implementing manufacturing information system, which is summarized as:  order transparency to discover non-value-added time, elimination of unplanned downtime based on equipment status analysis, advanced shop floor scheduling considering the whole plant and production resources, motivating employees to eliminate non-value-added working time with indicators, and synchronized production and quality control to improve process stability. Finally, MPDV experts also elaborated on the system application methodology using equipment maintenance as an example, emphasizing that the application of IT systems is not only to expose production management problems, but also to establish and optimize the management system through the IT system, and to modularize and standardize complex business processes for continuous improvement.

More than 200 guests attended the conference. Mr. Pit Heltmann, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Shanghai, and the leaders of the city of Kunshan delivered welcoming speeches. Experts from various industries, such as VDMA Machine Information Interoperability Division and NIO Automobiles, also made wonderful keynote.

During the conference, MPDV's booth attracted many guests to stop and visit, discussing the application of MES system with MPDV's sales staff, and expressing a strong interest in further contact and understanding.

On November 10, Mr. Jürgen Petzel, Board Member of MPDV Group and CSO, visited the VDMA Shanghai office during his stay in China.

During meeting with Daniel Yoo, Chief Representative of VDMA Shanghai Office, Mr. Petzel said that VDMA and MPDV have a long and fruitful history of cooperation. As the leader of the VDMA MES working group, MPDV led the development of the manufacturing management KPI standard VDMA66412-1. In the last two years, MPDV and VDMA have had in-depth cooperation in the "German Intelligent Manufacturing Community" and jointly proposed the four-step model of Industry 4.0.

Mr. Petzel introduced to Daniel Yoo MPDV's main business areas and customer base, noting that many members of the VDMA are MPDV's customers in Germany. Mr. Petzel recognized that VDMA plays an important role as a platform for German companies in China to expand their market and looked forward to expanding MPDV's brand influence through various marketing activities organized by VDMA.

Mr. Yoo emphasized that VDMA members are all from the manufacturing industry. VDMA builds an information exchange platform and organizes events including senior managers' breakfast meetings, special roundtables, and industry summits. VDMA also has a good cooperation mechanism with Chinese local authoritative associations and organizations such as China Mechanical Engineering Association. According to Yoo, VDMA members can not only expand their network and gain business opportunities through the platform, but also learn about the latest developments in the industry through the platform. As the beginning of a series of market events in China, MPDV will be invited to participate in the "VDMA Industry Conference for the Future" hosted by VDMA on November 17, and give a keynote speech "Smart Factory Best Practices for Manufacturing Excellence".

Mingfeng Li, Jörg Alexandre Gruß and Haiyong Cao accompanied the visit alongside.

We wish the VDMA industry conference a successful one!

On November 9, Mr. Jürgen Petzel, Board Member of MPDV Group and CSO, visited Phoenix Contact China in Nanjing.

While meeting with Mr. Gu Jiandang, Executive Committee Member of the Phoenix Electric Group and President of Phoenix (China) Investment Co., Ltd., Mr. Petzel mentioned that Phoenix Contact has a long history of cooperation with MPDV and the results are remarkable. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Phoenix Contact, and he was deeply honored to be a guest at the ceremony.

At the Phoenix Contact plant, Mr. Petzel, accompanied by the Digital Solutions Manager Ms. Lin Beilei, visited the production floor and quality control department to learn more about the application of HYDRA MES. Mr. Petzel was impressed by Phoenix Contact's applications based on lean manufacturing management, such as managing the cockpit, quality inspection task kanban, and automated AGV scheduling. Mr. Petzel noted that with the release of HYDRA X, more and more features that required custom development are being replaced by stable and mature standard features, so he recommended that Phoenix Contact could try to use HYDRA X in the e-mobility business unit to facilitate a mature final decision-making.

Mr. Petzel also discussed MIP ecological cooperation with Mr. Gu. He said that as early as 2007, MPDV and Phoenix Contact presented smart factory solutions at the Hannover Fair, a full six years before the German government proposed the concept of Industry 4.0. Just as MPDV had been working on MES for 15 years, the term MES was named by MESA. Mr. Petzel believes that both Phoenix Contact's PLCNext and product-line integrated control applications can be offered on MIP as standalone mAPPs, providing end users with a richer selection of applications.

After four years, an MPDV Customer Day was finally held again in Wuxi, China, on November 7, 2023.

Many international companies have their production site in China. Our twenty colleagues at the MPDV site in China have been successfully acquired numerous manufacturing companies as customers since the branch was founded more than 10 years ago. And now, a substantial number of them have accepted the invitation to the Customer Day.

This great response showed not only the interest, but also the relevance of the Customer Day for our partners in China, who have formed trusting business relationships with our local colleagues over the years.

At the beginning of the event, Dr. Haiyong Cao, Deputy General Manager, and Mingfeng Li, General Manager of MPDV's Shanghai branch office, as well as Jürgen Petzel, CSO of MPDV, and Alexandre Gruß, International Business Communications Manager, welcomed the more than eighty participants from thirty customer companies.

At the Customer Day, the guests were given an insight into how MPDV software is used in operation by means of best practice examples from two companies, Defontaine from Qingdao and Suzhou Vlinkplus Technology Co, Ltd. Our colleagues Henry Hong Chen and Jordan Cheng Qin provided details on the latest developments in MES, HYDRA X, Manufacturing Integration Platform (MIP), and APS FEDRA.

At the end of the day, participants were delighted with the wealth of input and positive feedback. The event organizers and guests also expressed their desire for a follow-up.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this successful Customer Day.

MPDV and Startup Factory (Kunshan) Co., Ltd. co-organized a seminar with the theme of "MES - The base stone of Smart Factory", which attracted the senior management and persons in charge of smart manufacturing from16 manufacturing companies.

The seminar, with topics like “Why MES is the cornerbone of Smart Factory”, “Which management systems does MES support” and “the best practice of MES”, introduced in detail how MES to be planned, implemented, and applied in the context of Smart Factory.

“New elements of MES in Smart Factory” were presented by MPDV experts as well. MPDV, as a global leader in Smart Manufacturing, has been always appliing  the latest technologies to MES Hydra to better support Smart Factory to achieve manufacturing excellence, such as automatic Big Data analytics, AI-based advanced scheduling, production prediction, and contactless operator guidance. These new technologies help companies to utilize production resources more efficiently, guide production execution more accurately, and predict production results more correctly in their manufacturing processes.

The participants were impressed by the standardization, modularity and platformization of the MPDV products. MPDV has accumulated more than 40 years of experience in various industries with thousands of end-customers. As a result, valuable practices precipitated in MPDV products, which is worth learning from, according to some attendees. Even after the seminar, they still continued to warmly discuss with MPDV experts.

Hosted by e-works and co-hosted by NCIM China and SIMIA, the "2022 International Smart Manufacturing Forum" was held on October 28^th in Shanghai.

It was the first time for MPDV to attend this event. Under the theme of "Data-driven Smart Manufacturing", the forum focused on:

• Frontier Trends of Smart Manufacturing
• Enterprise Digital Transformation and Smart Manufacturing
• Smart Manufacturing Software and IIoT

and offered a platform to discuss various challenges nowadays, as well as the difficulties and countermeasure for the promotion of Smart Manufacturing. The Forum attracted more than 500 guests, including executives of manufacturing enterprises and principles from relevant Smart Manufacturing vendors. A few thousand viewers also simultaneously joined and followed the forum online.

Dr. Haiyong Cao, CSO of MPDV China, shared the "New Trends of MES Development". MPDV, as a leader in the MES industry, has applied numerous new technologies to MES functionality at the system level to support Smart Factory to achieve manufacturing excellence.

Dr. Cao introduced some of MDPV’s cutting-edge technologies in MES applications, such as:

• Automated Data Science
• AI-based advanced production scheduling
• production forecasting
• contactless operation guidance, etc.

These new technologies help companies in the manufacturing process use production resources more efficiently, control production execution more precisely, and predict production outcomes more accurately.

During the forum, the participants visited the MPDV booth and discussed powerful application functions of MES with MPDV colleagues. With the help of the HYDRA demo, they intuitively got to know MPDV products. Due to the limited time available on-site forum, many participants were eager to have further communication and cooperation with MPDV after the meeting.