The AMB 2018 trade fair closed its doors recently. "Exhibitors, visitors and, of course, Messe Stuttgart are very happy – the AMB trade fair was a complete success," Ulrich Kromer von Baerle, spokesperson for the management team, recently announced. "There was a lot to offer, especially with regard to digitalization in production," Kromer added. This was true from the Digital Way and the Showcases to the exhibitors' stands.

"We had 1,553 exhibitors over an exhibition space of what is now more than 120,000 gross square meters, plus 91,016 visitors. These are all record figures for the Stuttgart trade fair center," Kromer announced. "We have started drawing visitors from further afield: Eighteen percent of the visitors came from 83 countries to attend AMB in Stuttgart."

According to Kromer, this success has confirmed Messe Stuttgart's intention to push ahead with expansion plans it has announced as part of its 2025 master plan, such as the construction of additional parking spaces, a new Hall 11 and a second convention center towards the west of the trade fair site.

"We are extremely happy with AMB 2018. We were in Hall 10 for the first time, and we were very impressed with our stand location," enthused Irene Bader, director of global marketing at DMG Mori. Bader was equally complimentary of the new AMB concept with a new distribution of stands in the halls. "The whole trade fair site was buzzing, and people were flooding in from Entrance West, which was near to us, from 9 a.m. on the first day." 

The quality of the visitors was also exceptional, according to Bader. After only three days, the number of quotations requested was far ahead of the previous AMB. Visitors to the trade fair mostly directed their questions towards topics that were focal points at the DMG Mori trade fair stand.

Digitalization, automation and additive production processes. Trade fair discussions about digitalization became significantly more substantial. In addition, almost half of all machines on display were already equipped with automation solutions, a trend that Bader is convinced will rise dramatically at the next AMB trade fair in two years' time. There was also much interest in the combination of additive production processes with machining, which DMG Mori has offered for many years.

At first, Dr Dirk Prust, managing director of technology and management spokesperson at Index-Werke, was afraid that the excellent state of the economy might cause some potential visitors to forego the trade fair due to a lack of time. "That wasn't the case at all." As he explained it, "The demand for implementation of new projects is so high that people simply need to keep up to date with what's going on." It is clear that these concrete requirements are taking much of the sting out of unstable political influences. They could also be hugely beneficial, as the Index boss underlined, drawing on the example of combustion engines: "The strict limit values for emissions call for new generations of engines, partly with additional components such as turbochargers. New machines will be required to produce these components."

From September 15 -19, 2020, AMB will be celebrating its 20th trade fair.