„Learning and acting in the digital world” – this was the motto of the German national IT Summit in Saarbrücken on November 17, 2016, where representatives from politics, industry and academia discussed the opportunities and challenges of digital education. “Learning and acting in the digital world shape our daily life”, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her keynote. That is why digial education must be accessible to everyone. She called upon teachers and students alike to encounter new developments with an open and curious mind.

How to successfully transfer Industrie 4.0 into reality – the Mittelstand 4.0-Kompetenzzentrum Kaiserslautern (SME 4.0 Competence Center Kaiserlautern) participated in the booth of Mittelstand Digital (Digital SME), which is a funding focus of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The project leader of the center SmartFactoryKL presented its mobile demonstrator “SkalA” which shows the future of production: integrating humans through scalable automation, controlling individual production elements through cyber-physical systems and enabling their communication as well as expanding production plants through standardized interfaces. The module on exhibit produces customer-individually and in a flexible output amount.