After the ZVO Surface Days 2021 already took place with a very good atmosphere despite a lower number of participants than before the pandemic, the event returned to its old greatness this year. Well over 500 participants and four parallel series of lectures on Thursday and five on Friday left nothing to be desired in terms of content. The range of topics was broad. On Thursday, for example, the first session focused on climate neutrality and energy and resource efficiency. The atmosphere was surprisingly constructive in view of the partly dramatic supply situation in the field of electricity and gas.
The topic also played a central role in lecture block two in the context of the importance of electroplating for sustainable energy generation and storage. Other presentations covered the topic of AI technology in electroplating and electroplating 4.0 in implementation. Apart from the purely technically oriented presentations, Session 4, the Entrepreneurs' Forum under the "Title Management meets Surface", also met with lively interest. Here it was already lively in the early morning in the energy forum, in which both the different possibilities of energy purchasing and their advantages as well as disadvantages were presented. This was followed by a lively discussion about measures and ways out of the impending supply crisis - up to and including the installation of oil or liquid gas tanks. However, the series of lectures had other interesting topics to offer, ranging from the communication trap audit to the challenge of employee management and stress management in times of crisis to cyber-crime and the possibilities of cushioning the resulting financial economic risks.
A presentation on the strategically motivated decommissioning of what is actually an excellently positioned incident operation - with extended obligations after 70 years of operation - was highly exciting. It became clear what effort and unpleasant surprises were involved for those carrying out the work. Another remarkable series of lectures on Friday dealt with decision making for complex systems. Here, the characteristics of a complex system were first explained and, building on this, practical examples were used to show why well-intentioned measures and changes in operational practice sometimes lead to unexpected, possibly even problematic and counterproductive developments. Other presentations dealt with the topic of recycling metallic coatings, including plastic components, including recycling and reuse of the substrate. Because one thing is clear, in times of dramatically increasing resource scarcity, both recycling and the avoidance of rejects are among the key factors in cost reduction.
All in all, the ZVO succeeded in including many important current topics in the lecture program. ZVO Managing Director Christoph Matheis also considers this year's edition a clear success: "We received overwhelming feedback on this year's ZVO Surface Days in Leipzig. Both the venue - the Congress Hall at the Zoo for the opening ceremony and the Congress Center Leipzig for the lecture program and industrial exhibition - and the selection of topics and quality of the lectures were praised. Our 65 exhibitors were also more than too satisfied and reported many good discussions at the stands. Although we couldn't quite match pre-Corona times with 515 attendees, #OTLeipzig22 exceeded expectations. Perhaps the most well-rounded event we've had so far overall!?"
The mo issue 11/2022 will go into more detail about the lecture contents in a more detailed follow-up report.