IFOY AWARD 2020: Scientists assess finalists

The scientists Guido Follert, Prof. Dr. Johannes Fottner and Martin Anders assessed the 16 nominated products and solutions for the independent IFOY Innovation Check in the test hall of IFOY partner Hannover Messe.

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The IFOY Innovation Check serves the 27 international jurors as a decision support for their vote in the world's largest intralogistics competition.

Ismaning near Munich/Hannover, February 12, 2020. Three renowned logistics scientists successfully carried out the IFOY Innovation Check in a hall of IFOY partner Hannover Messe on February 12, 2020. The researchers tested and assessed a total of 16 products and solutions from 15 manufacturers for the innovative value. These were nominated by a jury for the 8th competition of the International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year-AWARD, or IFOY AWARD for short.

The trio of scientists assessed new developments from Still, Hyster, Sany Europe, Combilift, Crown, Jungheinrich, Raymond, EasyMile, Geek+, Bosch Rexroth, ProGlove, ForkOn, doks.innovation, cellumation and Wiferion.

 For the one-day IFOY Innovation Check, Guido Follert, Head of the Department of Machinery and Equipment at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML, Prof. Dr. Johannes Fottner, holder of the fml - Chair of Materials Handling Technology Material Flow Logistics at the TU Munich, and Martin Anders, research assistant at the Institute for Technical Logistics and Work Systems at the TU Dresden, travelled to Hannover.  

 The independent IFOY Innovation Check is part of a three-part audit during the IFOY TEST DAYS, which take place this year from February 7th to 13th. The IFOY Innovation Check team with its many years of experience tested the nominees according to criteria such as market relevance, customer benefit, degree of novelty and type of implementation. As an orientation for the jurors, the scientists used a five-level evaluation scale for their assessment. The individual levels are: "not available", "less", "balanced", "good" and "very good".  

 The three experts had the challenge to compare the newly developed products and solutions with competing products already available on the market and to asses the technological differences. This is because one of the most important rules of the intralogistics competition is that the jury may not compare the nominated devices in a category with each other, but with their respective competitor products that are already available for purchase or rent.  

 For the IFOY Innovation Check, the trio of researchers analysed the written documents for the IFOY application and compared the functions and characteristics of the devices described there with the state of the art. The innovations, that the intralogistics companies described in their documents, were verified on site by means of visual and functional tests. In the evaluation, both innovative developments and successful new compositions as well as genuine innovations were identified and assessed.

 The results of the IFOY Innovation Check are presented to the jurors, who travelled to the IFOY TEST DAYS on 12 and 13 February, together with the results of the practice-oriented IFOY test by Dutch intralogistics expert Theo Egberts. Before the jurors give their final vote, they also test the nominated devices and solutions themselves.  

 By the way, apart from the members of the jury, nobody knows the overall result of the intralogistics Oscars before the awards ceremony. The festive IFOY AWARD NIGHT will take place on April 20, 2020 as a part of HANNOVER MESSE.