"Four billion people worldwide require furniture, doors, kitchens," says Homag CEO Pekka Paasivaara, describing the global market for his firm's technology. For wood manufacturers, says Paasivaara, "Considerations such as future-proof investment and investment security are of fundamental importance. And of course they want to be able to use their machines efficiently - not seldom, but 24/7, 365 days."
Paasivaara describes Tapio, an interactive machine platform that launched at Ligna 2017. It runs through the factory linking old and new machines using the Internet of Things (IoT), and is accessible on smart watches, tablets, and phones.
"Transparency is very important to our customers," says Paasivaara. "We deliberately designed our digital platform to be open. We want to be able to connect to machines from other manufacturers."
Companies in wood manufacturing are now taking steps into Industry 4.0. Tapio combines digital products for the entire wood industry with production machines as well as a wide range of materials and tools in an IoT platform.
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