9th VIX Automation Conference

As every year in the fall, we invited our partners and clients to a conference on trends in modern industry and the news in industrial automation software. The meeting took place on September 28-30, 2022 in Barczyzna (Greater Poland Voivodeship).

During the 9th VIX Automation Conference we return to the tradition of reference visits – this time we visited  manufacturing plant of  Tarkett Polska where floorboards are produced. Factory is located in Orzechowo (near Poznan).

The slogan of this year’s conference was ‘Naturally about the industry’, which not only refers to certain ecological or ergonomic threads that were discussed, but also the natural and relaxed atmosphere for which the conferences of the Katowice distributor of Proficy software are famous.

Some of the guests arrived day before official opening of the event, which is a great opportunity for networking and exchange of experiences.

Traditionally, the conference was opened by Mariusz Benna, CEO of VIX Automation. He discussed the development plans of  the company as well as changes regarding the company’s mission and vision. Grzegorz Stawarz, Key Account Manager, talked about the implementations of GE Digital products in the water and sewage industry based on projects carried out in the last few months. The first session ended with presentation of Łukasz Buczek, Head of the Technical Department, who talked about the ISA 101 standard, which makes HMI visualizations much more readable and pleasant to use.

Szymon Tomiczek (VIX Automation) during his presentation

The second session was opened by Thomas Schulz – Channel Manager for Central and Eastern Europe at GE Digital, who discussed the positioning of MES products in global markets, as well as a recent report by Gartner. During this session, the issues of OPC UA were also discussed (presented by Piotr Marynowski), as well as reporting systems compatible with GE Digital SCADA systems (reported by Mateusz Glanowski), which production companies should implement in order to… know more about their production.

The last session was opened by Łukasz Buczek – his presentation on securing SCADA systems aroused great interest. Just like the last ‘industrial’ speech by Paweł Czepiel, Sales Director at VIX Automation, who talked about the implementation of GE Digital systems in multi-branch companies and remote implementations.

Robert Motyka as a conference guest

The special guest of the conference was a radio presenter, TV personality and comedy artist Robert Motyka, known e.g. from performances in the Paranienormalni cabaret. Robert talked about how to be successful both in professional and private fields. Robert Motyka was also the star of the evening comedy performance, during which he performed with Jarosław Pająk.

The second day of the conference is traditionally dedicated to the reference visit. The host of the visit was Tarkett Polska, a manufacturer of floor boards. A company is working according to the highest ecological and ethical standards in terms of forest management. During the visit, we were able to see what the process of creating wooden floorboards looks like, as well as see how the GE Digital system is used in  the plant near Poznań. The visit was led by Tarkett’s Investment Manager, Szymon Stępień – the participants could feel like during production of the film frome ‘How It’s Made’ series.

Reference visit at the Tarkett Polska production plant 

Those who did not have the opportunity to attend the conference can watch the video on our YouTube channel >> about the quality control system based on GE Digital tools in Tarkett Polska.

The media patronage of this year’s event was taken by the following publishers: Automatyka Podzespoły Applications, Automatykab2b.pl, Control Engineering and the portals automatykaprzemyslowa.pl, inzynierur.pl and portalprzemyslowy.pl