Advanced Factories 2025, a strategic milestone on Indpuls’ agenda

From April 8 to 10, we attended Advanced Factories 2025 Expo & Congress, where we took part in an open innovation challenge through the Open Innovation Challenge initiative led by ACCIÓ. Advanced Factories is the benchmark fair for industrial transformation, held in Barcelona, now in its ninth edition.

Advanced Factories is a key event for Industry 4.0 leaders. Every year, it brings together top companies in automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, systems integration, and advanced software — all with the goal of boosting competitiveness and efficiency through technology.

More than just a trade fair, Advanced Factories also hosts the Industry 4.0 Congress, Europe’s leading conference on new business models, on-demand manufacturing, and mass customization. It also features events such as the Leadership Summit, the CIO’s Summit, the Factory Innovation Theatre, and the Factories of the Future Awards — creating a unique environment for knowledge sharing, innovation, and networking among industry professionals.

Under the slogan “Redefining Automation with Green Tech,” Advanced Factories strengthens its role as a key meeting point for driving the sustainable transformation of the industrial sector. This year, the fair focuses on how technology becomes a strategic ally to enhance energy efficiency, streamline production processes, and move toward a more decarbonized industry.

The INDPULS team attended the opening keynote by Xavier Marcet, president of Sarah Marlex, who addressed the challenge of AI by highlighting the need for a strategic and humanistic perspective in organizations, to build intelligent alliances between humans and machines. 

Marcet advocates for a humanistic approach to innovation, where combining intelligences does not mean losing values such as empathy, vision, or leadership. In this hybrid context, we need to rethink management, innovation, and talent to balance data and algorithms with human judgment. A European humanistic management model is needed — one that delivers results, but not at any cost.

As part of the Advanced Factories Congress, ACCIÓ led the Open Innovation Challenges initiative, which consists of business matchmaking sessions aimed at connecting companies or public entities with tech firms offering innovative solutions. At INDPULS, we contributed a challenge to identify use cases of AI-based internal search engines and chatbots already deployed in industrial environments.

We are seeking solutions that facilitate intuitive and efficient access to information, enhance corporate knowledge management, and support different business units in developing their product portfolios.

We had the chance to meet with several tech companies aligned with the AI challenge, as well as others that can address our partners’ needs:

• TheyeQ: Developed TheEye System, an innovative AI-based quality control system that uses thermal and multi-polarimetric imaging to ensure 100% production oversight.

• Infini: Provides smart automation solutions and recently launched Infini Analytics, a SaaS platform that gathers data from your AI agents, RPA systems, and automation tools to generate performance insights, enabling real-time, data-driven decision-making.

• TLC Energy: An AI-powered solution focused on maximizing electricity savings and efficiency.

• Plain Concepts: Offers a wide range of services in digitization and process optimization across AI, Data & Analytics, Cybersecurity, IoT, and more, with proven success across various industries.