Control 2022: “It’s great to exhibit again!”

The 34th Control – International Trade Fair for Quality Assurance – took place from 03. to 06 May 2022 was held with great success. After the two-year break due to the pandemic, more than 600 exhibitors finally experienced QS innovations live and up close again. Current and forward-looking developments include artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as well as production-integrated inspection processes.

Frickenhausen,10.05.2022 – 18,531 trade visitors to Control 2022 finally experienced QS advancements from the fields of vision technology, image processing, sensor technology, and measuring and testing technology again in Stuttgart – up to date, live and present. 617 exhibitors showed from 03. until May 06, 2022 on almost 23,000 square meters of space in six halls solution innovations and efficient QS top technologies. “It’s great that we can exhibit at Control again after two years of not doing so,” said Gerhard Mohr, Managing Director of Kapp Niles Metrology GmbH in Großostheim. “It’s gratifying to see that trade visitors are starting to arrive again, that attendance shows are picking up steam, and that we’re getting a little closer to the old reality.” Georg Gutsch, area sales manager at Kapp Niles reinforced this statement, adding, “Face-to-face interaction simply has many great advantages that are not even possible with online formats.”

Hubert Meintrup, Advisor New Technology at Matrix Automations GmbH in Ostfildern, also expressed his relief at finally being visible again to interested parties and users in the industry. “We’re excited to be back.” Matthias Ruf, Head of Sales at the SKZ Plastics Center in Würzburg, was equally pleased. “For us, Control was successful from the very first day of the show, with great interest from visitors,” Ruf explained. “We are happy to be able to present ourselves here as SKZ in a professional way.”

At the 2022 industry highlight, 31 percent of exhibitors came from abroad; six percent of exhibitors came from Switzerland, four percent from Italy, three percent from the USA, and just over two percent of exhibitors came from the UK. Fabian Krüger, Control project manager, expressly thanked every exhibitor, including the trade fair teams, for making the Control restart a reality. Bettina Schall, Managing Director of trade fair promoter P. E. Schall, also expressed her delight and satisfaction: “This trade fair was awaited with great anticipation, with excitement, and with the best mood in advance. Because we all missed the personal exchange, the expert discussion at eye level, the real experience of the plants with all our senses. Fortunately, this is now possible again!”

Control is regarded as a pacesetter in quality assurance and provides trade visitors with everything they need to score points in international competition with excellent QA in manufacturing. In all the halls, it was evident throughout that there is a huge demand for personal exchanges about new developments. In the past three years since the last Control, quality verification and quality assurance have taken on new importance due to growing automation and digitization, non-contact operations and remote services, small batch sizes, zero-defect manufacturing and data analytics. Therefore, news around measuring and testing technology, materials testing, analysis equipment, vision technology, image processing, sensor technology as well as weighing and counting technology were eagerly awaited. In particular, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) processes also met with great interest. The fact that AI has long since arrived in production and significantly simplifies QA processes could be experienced in many places. Even small industrial companies can realize a simple entry into AI support, as demonstrated, for example, by Dr. Dominik Lausch from Denkweit GmbH in Halle together with Marvin Krebs from Xactools in Bönnigheim. Measurement processes must be increasingly fast, and they must be increasingly reliable. AI-supported methods support this. Current topics also include the fact that measuring, testing and inspection processes are an integral part of manufacturing operations. Instead of taking place in specially created measuring environments, testing processes are instead taking place in environments with dust and vibrations as well as under time pressure, which results in new challenges for measuring machines and testing equipment. “We are increasingly working on this,” confirmed Dr. Heike Wenzel, Managing Partner of the Wenzel Group, who was also excited to finally be back live in Stuttgart.

On an international scale, Control is the most interesting and also the largest trade fair on the subject of quality assurance. With top-class events accompanying the trade fair with the renowned research institutes of the Fraunhofer Institute, Fraunhofer Allianz Vision and Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA), as well as the special show “Non-Contact Measurement Technology”, Control is traditionally a firmly established marketplace of innovations. The next Control – International Trade Fair for Quality Assurance – will take place from 09. until May 12, 2023.