Headline November 16, 2016/ ''' !DEUTSCHLAND - DIGITAL-LAND? '''

''' !DEUTSCHLAND - 

DIGITAL-LAND? '''

WITH MOST LOVING AND very fond dedication  to the many, many beautiful memories  of Student Tanvir Iqbal Querishi /  *Burn Hall and Germany*

From his family, his brothers, all over the world,  his many cousin-sisters,  -and his many good and great friends  all over Pakistan and Germany.

SINCE IT WAS FOUNDED in 1923 Trumpf,  -a family owned company based near Stuttgart, has had just one mission

*Making Things that make things*.

It started out with motorised hand shears and other tools to work sheet metals. It then invented fabrication machines with a numerical control system and later was among the first to use lasers to cut metal.

A prime example of a firm from Germany's industrial  Mittelstand  that has outgrown the label which literally means   ''mid-sized trades'' , the firm today has annual sales of  Euro 2.2 billion [$ 3.2 billion]  and more than 10,000 employees worldwide.

Trumpf's roots in metalworking and other hardware stand in stark contrast to what it is trying to achieve next : building a new business purely based on software and data.

Unveiled just so recently, its online offering,  called Axoom, connects machines built by  Trumpf  and others, and uses the data it collects from them to help customers organise their production  -for instance, to warn them when they are running out of material or to order it directly from the supplier.

Much like  Smartphones,  Azoom will be able to run  ''apps''  from other providers, such as  software  to schedule workloads, or to predict when machines will need a spare part.

The company's attempt to redefine itself is emblematic of the leap that manufacturers, in Germany everywhere else, now have to make. 

The much discussed  ''internet of things''  [IOT]  is becoming a reality on factory floors, industrial machines and the products they make are increasingly packed with sensors and connected to the Internet.

As a result, the rules in many industries from construction equipment to cars, are changing : making things matters less and knowing things more. In may cases, the successful companies will no longer be the ones that make the best products, but the ones that gather the best data and combine them to offer the best digital services.

And the biggest winners of all may be those that control a ''platform'', a layer of software that combines different kinds of devices, data and services, on top of which other firms can build their own offerings  -just as Trumpf  trying to do with  Axoom.

Mastering this sort of transformation ought to be on the agenda of any country with a big manufacturing base. But nowhere, is the sense of urgency more developed than Germany, where the fear:

*That digitization threatens its position as a leading industrial nation has been given added piquancy by Volkswagen's recent scandals*.

The first half of the battle to master the digital world was lost, according to Timotheus Honges, the boss of  Deutsche Telecom.

''The question now is: how do you win the second half?''

The problem is not that German companies have stopped innovating. In fact, many are ahead of the pack in digitising  their products as well as their shop floors. 

Making products and factories  ''smart'', however, is only the first stage in the digitisation journey, argues Germany's National Academy of Sciences and  Engineering  {Acatech}  in a recent report.

The nest is to use the data generated by connected devices and other information to offer other clever  services, and make money with new business models.

Firms that cannot create such offerings  ''may quickly lose their ability to compete,'' argues the Acatech report. 

Smart services do not have to be closely related to the principal use of the product. 

A high-end car, for instance has the digital horsepower of 20 personal computers and generates 25 gigabytes of  data per hour of driving, estimates Gabriel Seiberth of Accenture, a provider of IT and consulting services.

Rather than just building vehicles, he argues, carmakers should be thinking about how to provide, and profit from the entertainment and e-commerce services that could be offered on the screens inside a vehicle.

*The car will become a central part of a person's digital life,'' says Mr. Seiberth. 

That strikes a particular chord in Germany. Some fear that the carmakers, which  directly or indirectly employ one in seven workers nationwide, could be demoted to low margin metal-bashers, while-

American tech giants make most of the money by providing the  software and the  in-car entertainment - and perhaps, in time, designing the cars themselves.

Apple and Google are pressing carmakers to install the operating system they have designed for cars entertainment systems, which in practice will suck up all sorts of other data about the car and its occupants. 

The Honour and Serving of the latest  Operational Research on  *Highly Industrialised Nations and Technology*  continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one:

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of Germany. 

See Ya all on !WOW!     -the World Students Society and ...    !E-WOW!   -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' The Business '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless