IIoT World recorded video interviews with leaders from Siemens, ABB, Cybus, HighByte, InfluxData, Coreflux, TwinThread, GlobalLogic (Hitachi Group), NEURA Robotics, Skkynet, Tronics Microsystems (TDK Group), and Orange Business at Hannover Messe 2026 (April 20-24, Hannover, Germany, 130,000+ attendees, 4,000 exhibitors). This page collects every article and video from the show floor. New interviews continue publishing through May 2026.
AI-Generated Factory Software and Pop-Up Manufacturing
Peter Sorowka, CEO of Cybus, described enterprise manufacturers generating production-ready applications through prompts within a single week. The traditional Manufacturing Execution System procurement cycle runs three years end to end. AI-generated applications bypass that cycle entirely. Sorowka called this “the first signs of a tsunami of AI-generated applications, because it is so cheap to generate new applications.” European manufacturers face pressure to produce 30% to 50% more output with half the number of people by 2030, which accelerates this transition. Read the full article: Who Controls AI-Generated Factory Software?
Ujjwal Kumar, President of DI Automation Americas at Siemens, demonstrated pop-up manufacturing: a Gatorade bottling line at a FIFA World Cup stadium, producing on site with flavors adjusted by region. Siemens announced the Eigen Engineering Agent, which writes verified PLC code, builds SCADA screens, and runs diagnostics using natural language, with edge AI deployment running 2-5x faster. The first fully AI-driven factory is being built with NVIDIA in Erlangen, Germany. Read the full article: What Does a Fully AI-Driven Factory Look Like?
Closed-Loop AI Quality and the Wisdom of the Fleet
Andrew Waycott, President and Co-founder of TwinThread, described five years of fully closed-loop AI quality optimization running in production. The platform operates over 1 million digital twins and 2 million AI models across four layers: predictive, prescriptive, generative, and agentic. At the agentic layer, AI pushes optimizations to control systems. Average operator tenure at one customer dropped from 10+ years pre-COVID to under 2 years today. TwinThread captures expertise that used to live in operators’ notebooks and shares it across every facility through what Waycott calls the “wisdom of the fleet.” Watch the interview: TwinThread on YouTube. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
AI Assistant for Measurement Devices
David Lincoln of ABB showed how the MyMeasurement Assistant resolves 80% of measurement device faults without the technician contacting support. The assistant scans a QR code on the device display, reads diagnostics, and prescribes exact repair steps from ABB’s documentation library. ABB spent three years tuning the model to refuse guesses. The remaining 20% escalate automatically with full diagnostic context attached. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
Procurement Digitization and Digital Twin ROI
Roxana Moldovan of GlobalLogic (Hitachi Group) described how one procurement digitization project delivered $5 million in annual savings by modernizing invoicing processes and aggregating requests. The Hitachi Rail factory in Hagerstown, Maryland, a 300,000 ft2 facility, validates its digital twin in simulation before connecting to live production data. The principle: build digitally first, connect to real operations second. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
Data Infrastructure for Industrial AI
Torey Penrod-Cambra, VP Marketing at HighByte, noted that manufacturers have tried to make analytics, machine learning, and AI work with industrial data for 20 years, and the bottleneck has not been the technology. HighByte’s approach contextualizes raw sensor data (adding factory, line, asset, and work order metadata) before it reaches AI models. At Hannover Messe, HighByte reported 330+ pre-booked meetings. Read the full article: Data Context Decides Industrial AI Results
In a separate demonstration, John Harrington and Aron Semle of HighByte showed how Bayer connected an AI agent to a 15-year-old production historian inside a GXP pharmaceutical facility, using custom MCP tools to control what the agent could access. Watch the interview: HighByte: AI Agents in Pharma on YouTube. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
Ben Corbett, Senior Sales Engineer at InfluxData, presented InfluxDB 3, a columnar storage engine with unlimited cardinality and SQL as its standard query language. InfluxDB 3 targets manufacturers evaluating replacements for legacy historians. A formal partnership with Litmus, announced at Hannover Messe, pairs the database with an industrial edge platform. Watch the interview: InfluxData on YouTube. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
Hugo Vaz, CEO of Coreflux, demonstrated an MQTT broker handling 35,000+ simultaneous clients and 800,000+ messages per second on a $35 Raspberry Pi. Coreflux reduces factory integration projects from 90 days to one week. The system includes Language of Things, an MCP server, and an AI agent embedded inside the broker. Read the full article: Factory Integration: From 90 Days to One Week
Humanoid Robotics for the Manufacturing Worker Deficit
David Reger of NEURA Robotics presented the 4NE1 humanoid designed to address a projected 101 million worker deficit by 2030 across China, Europe, and Japan. AWS serves as the cloud partner for physical AI training and fleet intelligence. Pricing starts at 60,000 euros, with 185 million euros raised and a target of five million cognitive robots by 2030. Article publishing soon on iiot-world.com.
OT Cybersecurity Against AI-Written Threats
Gary Tillery, CEO of Skkynet, warned that 80% of ransomware is now AI-written and that agentic AI threats targeting OT networks represent the next escalation. Skkynet’s approach removes the inbound attack surface entirely through an outbound-only architecture for OT connectivity. Read the full article: How Do You Secure OT When AI Writes the Malware?
IIoT World also published a broader analysis of seven ICS/OT cybersecurity trends and frameworks for 2026. Read: Top 7 ICS/OT Cybersecurity Trends 2026
Precision Sensing and Edge Diagnostics
Two interviews with Tronics Microsystems (a TDK Group company) covered different aspects of industrial sensing. Dr. Antoine Filipe explained why sensor origin and MEMS chip procurement decisions are becoming strategic for manufacturers. Julien Romala, Application Engineer, demonstrated the VIBO sensor computing FFT at up to 50 kHz inside the device, reducing dependency on cloud connectivity for predictive maintenance. Read: Why Sensor Origin Matters in Manufacturing and What Changes When Vibration Diagnostics Run Inside the Sensor
Private 5G and Sovereign AI for Manufacturing
Sam Waes, Head of Smart Industries Europe at Orange Business, addressed why factories need private 5G instead of Wi-Fi when connecting AGVs, humanoid robots, tablets, and video cameras. Orange and Nokia developed a 5G starter pack for rapid deployment. One paper manufacturer used the combination of private 5G and AI-driven energy analysis to start selling energy back to the grid. Orange also offers sovereign AI through Live Intelligence, running Claude, Mistral, and GPT on private clouds so every query stays within company walls. Read the full article: Private vs Public vs Hybrid 5G. Watch the interview: Orange Business on YouTube
Watch All Interviews
All Hannover Messe 2026 interviews are available on the IIoT World YouTube channel. Follow IIoT World on LinkedIn for daily updates on industrial AI, cybersecurity, and smart manufacturing. This page will be updated as remaining articles publish.
Upcoming: AI Manufacturing Day 2026 (May 12, free virtual conference) continues the industrial AI conversation. Several speakers from these Hannover Messe interviews will be presenting. Browse all upcoming events.
