Tailwind from the industry

LIGNA.Innovation Net­work (LIGNA.IN), a new dig­i­tal for­mat for the inter­na­tion­al wood­work­ing and pro­cess­ing indus­try, launch­es on Sep­tem­ber 27. Against the back­drop of the ongo­ing chal­lenges posed by the glob­al Covid 19 pan­dem­ic, the dig­i­tal event com­pris­ing an expo, con­fer­ence and net­work­ing event is meet­ing with a pos­i­tive response from the indus­try. Com­pa­nies such as Biesse, Bürkle, Dief­fen­bach­er, Fagus-Gre­con Greten, Homag, Hym­men Maschi­nen- und Anla­gen­bau, Imos, Insti­tut für Holztech­nolo­gie, LEUCO, Mafell, Min­da, SCM, Siemens, Siem­pelkamp, Spänex, Steine­mann, Stela Lax­huber, Weima, Weinig and 20–20 have already decid­ed to present their equip­ment, prod­ucts and inno­va­tions at the Net­work format.

“In a LIGNA year, the indus­try has a need to dis­cuss cur­rent trends, present inno­va­tions and net­work with inter­est­ed play­ers. Where con­di­tions are chang­ing, we need to work togeth­er to find new answers to make our indus­try mar­ket­place, LIGNA, sus­tain­able. The LIGNA.Innovation Net­work is one such new, joint­ly designed response.”

- Chris­t­ian Pfeif­fer, Glob­al Direc­tor LIGNA & Wood­work­ing Shows, Deutsche Messe, Han­nover, Germany

Raphaël Prati, Chief Mar­ket­ing & Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer, Biesse Group, Italy, under­lines the impor­tance of the dig­i­tal for­mat: “LIGNA has suc­ceed­ed in posi­tion­ing itself as the ref­er­ence show for the wood­work­ing indus­try world­wide. The rea­son for this suc­cess is its abil­i­ty to adapt to indus­try changes and tech­no­log­i­cal developments.

The net­work is a clear exam­ple of this and Biesse shares this approach. The dig­i­tal event, as well as the entire LIGNA plat­form, is a key fac­tor in our go-to-mar­ket plans because it gives us a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with the glob­al indus­try to show­case our new solutions.”

Presentations and panel discussions

In addi­tion to the Expo and Net­work­ing sec­tions, the LIGNA.Innovation Net­work’s two-day con­fer­ence pro­gram also offers new for­mats for learn­ing about trends and mak­ing con­tacts. For exam­ple, an inter­ac­tive con­fer­ence pro­gram will be broad­cast live from the H’Up in Hall 18 at the Han­nover Exhi­bi­tion Cen­ter on two stages. These repli­cate the well-known LIGNA events Wood Indus­try Sum­mit for the pri­ma­ry indus­try and LIGNA.Forum for the sec­ondary industry.

The con­tent of the two-day con­fer­ence pro­gram is based on LIG­NA’s focus top­ics. The Wood Indus­try Sum­mit dig­i­tal will focus on “Process Tech­nolo­gies of the Bioe­con­o­my.” It will high­light the eco­nom­ic and tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions that result from new treat­ment and pro­cess­ing options for wood as the most impor­tant renew­able resource.

In addi­tion to the polit­i­cal frame­work con­di­tions for the expan­sion of sus­tain­able and cir­cu­lar wood use as a pil­lar of a sus­tain­able bioe­con­o­my, new ideas for the use of wood as a raw mate­r­i­al, the pro­mo­tion of start-up com­pa­nies and mar­ket launch of new prod­ucts, wood use in the con­struc­tion indus­try and the imple­men­ta­tion of the first wood-based biore­fin­ery in Ger­many will be high­light­ed. Anoth­er focus will be on the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of forestry and tim­ber indus­try process chains and inno­va­tions in sawmill technology.

At the LIGNA.Forum dig­i­tal, the focus top­ics will be trans­for­ma­tion in wood pro­cess­ing and pre­fab­ri­ca­tion process­es in tim­ber con­struc­tion. The agen­da includes pre­sen­ta­tions on robot­ics in the wood and fur­ni­ture indus­try and the pro­duc­tion of a sam­ple piece of fur­ni­ture using RFID tech­nol­o­gy. In addi­tion, it will be shown how project busi­ness, trade busi­ness and con­tract work can be car­ried out with the same resources from order entry to plan­ning, pro­duc­tion and assem­bly with the aid of dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Trends and devel­op­ments in floor­ing pro­duc­tion will also be addressed.

DIPA Symposium

On the third day of the event, the DIPA Sym­po­sium of the DIPA Asso­ci­a­tion for Sur­face Design with Dig­i­tal Print­ing (Dig­i­tal Print­ing Asso­ci­a­tion) will be streamed live from H’Up as a hybrid event. The con­fer­ence, with Ger­man- and Eng­lish-lan­guage lec­tures and pan­el dis­cus­sions on cur­rent trends, field reports and pre­sen­ta­tions, offers answers on the sub­ject of design­ing sur­faces your­self. It encour­ages net­work­ing between inter­est­ed par­ties and com­pa­nies that are already suc­cess­ful­ly using dig­i­tal print­ing or plan to do so in the future.