Top accolades were achieved for the “Best of Industry Award” again in 2018, by way of a month-long vetting process for innovative solutions that had won or been nominated for an industry award or had attracted the most interest for their novel qualities from readers at maschinenmarkt.de in the period from July 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018. And Klingelnberg was among the honorees: In late 2016, the machine builder won the Industry 4.0 Award given by the trade journal Produktion in collaboration with the consulting firm ROI Management, at which the company had presented its cyber-physical production system. This remarkable Industry 4.0 solution was nominated in the category of the same name. “We are delighted that we have been able to rouse such enthusiasm in the industry with our solution that we are now a candidate for this distinguished industry award in the Industry 4.0 category,” said Martin Boelter, Chief Operating Officer for Production and Technology at Klingelnberg.

The cyber-physical production system for cylindrical gears

Klingelnberg has now successfully adapted its 2016 award-winning system for bevel gear production for use with cylindrical gears. Until now, it was not possible in the world of cylindrical gears to obtain a manufacturable flank geometry based on a manufacturing simulation of the gear set. Instead, the flank geometry within the transmission design was based on purely functional aspects. With Klingelnberg’s newly developed Gear Designer simulation software, design engineers have the ability to derive the manufacturable flank geometry from the function-based geometry. Since the manufacturing variance became quantifiable in this way, it also became possible to develop an automatic correction module designed to automatically minimize the manufacturing variance. This innovative Closed Loop approach has now given rise to the possibility of a cyber-physical production system for cylindrical gears in which every step in the value chain is described by a digital twin.


Cast your vote now – every vote counts

Now it is up to the industry magazine readers and an independent jury of experts to choose the winners of the “Best of Industry Awards” from among the nominees. The final result is based on a 50 percent weighting of the jury portion and a 50 percent weighting of the online reader survey. “We are hoping for active participation on the part of the readers and will of course be very pleased if as many of them as possible choose to cast their vote for us,” said Martin Boelter. The survey is expected to be available online by May 20 at: http://bit.ly/2FyxS0A.

This year’s winners of the “Best of Industry Awards” will then be honored on June 7, 2018, during a gala event at the Vogel Convention Center in Würzburg, Germany.