Sino-Lower Saxony Alliance for Science and Culture officially sealed - Sino-German Workshop Intelligent Manufacturing launched in the afternoon

After a short welcoming address by the President of Clausthal University of Technology, Prof. Dr. Schachtner, in which he once again emphasized that the educational mission and training of young scientists at Clausthal University of Technology have high priority, the Minister President of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, Björn Thümler, was called in. According to Thümler, it is "a strong signal for the importance of international research cooperation if China Week can take place as an online event despite the ever-increasing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic". By signing the MoU today, TU Clausthal will be able to continue its successful tradition of cooperation with China. According to Prof. Dr. Hanschke, the fact that the idea of a Chinese-Lower Saxony alliance, which emerged during a trip to China in July 2019, could be advanced so quickly is primarily thanks to the "proven diplomatic team of Hou and Hou". Furthermore, the "special open-mindedness of the Minister of Science, Björn Thümler, for German-Chinese university cooperation" and "the extraordinary commitment of our two university presidents, Prof. Liu and Prof. Schachtner" had a positive influence on the implementation of the project. This was followed by a further greeting from Prof. Dr. Huibin Xu, President of Beihang University and Chairman of the Clausthal University of Technology Chinese Alumni Association, as well as congratulations from the Vice President of Sichuan University, Prof. Leye Yao in Chengdu, and the Vice President of Kunming University of Science and Technology, Prof. Wenhui Ma in Kunming, after the official signing. Both highly appreciate this new project and hope that it will offer students (even) more opportunities and strengthen the partnership between Germany and China. In addition to the aforementioned (vice) presidents of four partner universities, President of Chengdu University Prof. Qingyuan Wang, President of Dali University Prof. Hua Wang and Vice President of Northeast Petroleum University Prof. Changping Yu were also present online.

In the afternoon, the English-language 2nd Sino-German Workshop Intelligent Manufacturing started with up to 71 connected participants, moderated by Prof. Dr. Michael Z. Hou and Prof. Dr. Dietmar Möller. In addition to topics such as the future viability of Industry 4.0 and digital sovereignty using the example of GAIA-X, presented by Ernst Stöckl-Pukall, Dr Christoph Legat gave a lecture on the relevance of standardization in the context of Industry 4.0. Despite all the progress and benefits that the digital transformation brings, Legat said that we must not forget that people work in companies. The aim of Industry 4.0 is not to replace all people in companies with machines, but rather to enable collaboration between people and machines. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Thiede from the University of Twente even posed the question "Does all this really make sense?" later on in his presentation on cyber-physical production systems.

As far as Chinese-German cooperation in the context of Industry 4.0 is concerned, Prof. Dr. Thomas Knothe advises combining Chinese speed with German precision. In this way, the Germans could learn more from the flexibility and pragmatism of the Chinese, which he explains using an example:

"It doesn't matter if the cat is white or black. The most important point is, the cat catch mouses or hear a fish".

Today's "special guest" was Dr. Chengdong Wang, Chief Representative of Huawei Berlin, who spoke about the protection of German-Chinese Industry 4.0 - cooperation with common rules. The moderator Prof. Dr. Hou's invitation to use this opportunity to ask critical questions was very well received by the participants.

This was followed by further contributions describing specific projects and their implementation, such as the presentation by Clausthal Professor Christian Rembe on real-time data acquisition in Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) using sensors or on digital transformation in the construction industry by Dr. Xiangyang Jiang, member of the board of Putzmeister GmbH. Finally, Dr. Andreas Deutschmann from the German Aerospace Center used the example of future transport hubs to give a very practical and vivid description of how the digital transformation can have a lasting impact on air traffic.