Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2024

The year 2023 was both exciting and challenging for the surface technology industry. There were many technological developments and trends such as artificial intelligence and solutions for greater energy efficiency and sustainability. At the same time, however, the economic development continued to be challenging for the industry. However, these two factors together also give us hope: New, more energy-efficient plant technology, for example, can help to reduce operating costs and therefore make production more economical. Automation can be an antidote to the shortage of skilled workers and rising wage costs. Robots and cobots are already helping where skilled workers are lacking or need support. The first ready-to-use AI solutions even allow us to predict that certain activities, for example in painting and coating, will be completely automated in the future - the "virtual coater" could actually become a reality and replace human specialists who can then fill the gaps that exist in other areas.

2023 was also a very exciting and thrilling year for Surface Technology Online. Numerous informative and interesting technical discussions were held at the many events this year and cooperation with trade fair and conference organizers was expanded. Every day, new technical articles and news are added to the information available on the new surface technology platform. New content such as a technical lexicon and a job market have been added, and all content has also been available in English since this year. The steadily increasing number of hits shows that the Surface Technology Online offering is well received. The journey continues in 2024 and we would like to thank all our readers, authors, companies, associations and institutions, advertisers, PR agencies and cooperation partners who have supported us and helped us to create a great and openly accessible information platform about surface technology on the Internet!