The Europe-based Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) organised the first meeting of a new working group at Bauma called Machines in Construction 4.0, which was founded at the construction equipment industry trade fair in Munich with the aim of involving all players in the construction value chain to work in a more structured manner.

With the main goal of networking machines together, the group is concerned with machine data, machine to machine communication, standardisation, ISO 15143-3 (the communication scheme designed to provide mobile machinery status data from a telematics provider’s server to third-party client applications via the Internet), and data rights.

Membership in the group is open to equipment manufacturers, construction companies, material suppliers and software manufacturers, as well as universities and research institutions globally. The new group’s creation also gives an opportunity to companies that are unable to join the VDMA as members to be part of it.

Joachim Schmid, VDMA managing director for Construction Equipment and Plant Engineering, said: “With the founding of the MiC 4.0 working group, we are responding to the desire of our members to tackle this issue intensively, in a structured and goal-oriented manner.”