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48 SMT Magazine • December 2015 people can buy it so that it's cheap enough. That means automation. But 100% automation is not always the thing you want to do, so adaptive au- tomation is the thing you want to head for. This is probably also one thing you will re- ally address in Industry 4.0. You find ways to not only have this maximum self-organizing production as we called it a couple of years ago, where you don't see any humans in the fab. It really is about creating an environment where humans work together with machines in a way that's good for both sides. While you're easing the work of the humans, we also have this new topic of collaborative robots, where you have stupid monotonous work taken by the robot but collaborating with the human safely, so it's not really the scary machine but something like a colleague. We have a special here at the show about augmented reality, which is a very nice technology that came from the gaming indus- try. So technology advancement doesn't only come from the production technology or going down in feature sizes for PCB or semiconduc- tors. It also arises from how to use the machines. This also is very important for the members because that's another business opportunity. If you have this nice augmented reality in your machine and your customer likes it, he will probably buy the next machine from you rath- er than from your competitor because you have this nice feature. It's not the feature of produc- tion technology inside the machine. It's just the feature of how to use it. Las Marias: What types of committees or teams are currently active in VdmA productronic? Maiser: We very much rely on our members as steering committees. We have a board. In VDMA as for other associations, too, there are people who are paid, like me. Then there are the members and members vote for a board. The board is the steering committee. We have a steering committee that,as Productronics it- self, really consists of known people and very good people from all parts of the process chain, so that we have a nice cross-section of the in- dustry. Sometimes, when we have these new activities we create subgroups and then also subheads. As I said, for these new groups—dis- plays, organic electronics, PV and battery, we created completely new groups. They are still attached to Productronics but they have their own boards. They have their own people who work on it. They are even sometimes bigger than Productronics. For example, Productron- ics has 75 members. The organic electronics subgroup, for example, has 250 members. The battery group has 100 members. Sometimes, we create so much new hype and new ecosys- tems, people say, 'Yeah, this is new. I have to go in there. This is interesting.' Things become very big then. We created organic electronics in 2004. It's still a new technology and still not in full production, but it's so attractive that people say, 'Yes, I have to be part of that.' Las Marias: how do you cooperate with the other associations? Maiser: This is a must. You cannot do every- thing on your own. Of course, we are an as- sociation for the machinery industry only. We basically have only the machinery people with us. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, so for the organic electronics we really created a whole environment that the customers and the materials makers are in. For Productronics, it's pretty clear that if we want to talk to customers we also want to talk to the customer associa- tions. In Germany, there is the ZVEI (Zentral- verband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindust- rie e.V./German Electrical and Electronic Man- ufacturers' Association) and we have also col- laborations with the optics industry and with the German Chemical Industry (VCI). We also have within Germany collaborations with the VDmA ProDUcTronIcS FeATure inTerview Machine manufacturing, ERSA GmbH.