About atp

atp

atp — the atp magazin — is the practice-oriented trade magazine for automation technology and digital transformation in the producing industry, published by the Vulkan-Verlag and read by the engineers who automate Germany's factories and process plants. Describing itself as the leading medium of the process and manufacturing industries and the knowledge platform for automation technology and digital transformation, it addresses the engineers, plant operators and decision-makers who automate factories and process plants. Its distinguishing concept is the dual editorship: two editors-in-chief — Prof. Dr.-Ing. Mike Barth for the Science section and Dr.-Ing. Thomas Tauchnitz for the Industry section — curate a program whose core consists of demanding, peer-reviewed main articles by experts from science and industry, complemented by technology reports and trend reports on new business models in the age of digital transformation. With its agenda-setting coverage of Industry 4.0, the atpinfo.de portal's daily news flow, and congresses such as SECURITY UNTER KONTROLLE, atp operates as the automation community's cross-media platform.

Overview

Automation technology in Germany spans two great worlds: the process industry — chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, energy, water — with its continuous plants, safety instrumented systems and NAMUR standards; and the manufacturing industry — automotive, machinery, electronics — with its discrete production, robotics and digital twins. atp covers both, with the digital transformation as the unifying theme: the convergence of IT and OT, artificial intelligence in production, cybersecurity for industrial control systems, and the data-driven optimization of plants and factories. Its readers are the automation engineers, plant managers, maintenance specialists and digitalization officers of the producing industry, plus the researchers and students of the automation disciplines.

The editorial program is built around the peer-reviewed main article: substantial technical contributions — on topics from the digital type plate (digitales Typenschild) and alarm management per NAMUR NA 102 to AI-based heating curves and agent-based systems — reviewed by experts from science and industry before publication, giving the magazine an academic rigor unusual in the trade press and making it citable in the engineering literature. Around this core, the technology reports track products, systems and solutions; the trend reports examine new business models — from data spaces (Datenräume) to the autonomous plant; and the interviews with industry practitioners (such as the AVEVA conversation on Green Data Intelligence in issue 8/2026) translate the digital-transformation agenda into business language. The atp edition line publishes premium special issues, such as the historical premium issues archived on the portal.

History

The atp title grew from the German automation press tradition — the journal that accompanied the process industry's automation through the decades, published by the Deutscher Industrieverlag (DIV), the Essen-based technical publisher whose portfolio served the process industries. The magazine's concept — the bridge between automation science and industrial practice — reflected the German automation community's distinctive structure: the VDI/VDE Gesellschaft Mess- und Automatisierungstechnik (GMA), the NAMUR user association of the process industries, and the university institutes whose research feeds industrial practice.

The digital-transformation era reshaped the title: the atp magazin repositioned itself as the practice-oriented magazine for automation technology and digital transformation, with the dual Science/Industry editorship formalizing the science-practice bridge — Prof. Dr.-Ing. Mike Barth curating the scientific program, Dr.-Ing. Thomas Tauchnitz the industrial one, working in close coordination and looking beyond process automation's horizon for new topics. The Vulkan-Verlag — the technical publisher that took the title forward — built the atpinfo.de portal into the daily news platform, added the congress business (SECURITY UNTER KONTROLLE, the IT/OT security congress with its 20-member program board from science and industry), and developed the magazine's agenda-setting role for Industry 4.0. Through these changes, the title maintained its positioning: the leading medium where automation science meets industrial practice.

Coverage and Content

Each issue's program follows the automation community's agenda. The peer-reviewed main articles provide the technical depth: model-based engineering of AI systems for automated plants, agent-based systems, autonomous cyber-physical systems, energy- and resource-efficient distributed systems — the research topics of the Helmut-Schmidt University, Ruhr-University Bochum and other automation institutes, written for practicing engineers. The technology reports cover the product and system innovations: instrumentation, control systems, industrial software, robotics, and the digital tools of the smart factory and the smart plant.

The trend reports and special topics address the strategic questions: Industry 4.0 and the digital twin, artificial intelligence in production (from "Human-Centric Automation" in issue 6-7/2025 to AI-based analytics for CO2 reduction in 8/2026), IT/OT security for industrial control systems, data spaces and the SCALE-MX initiatives, sustainability and energy management (the "ecological weight" of industry, Green Data Intelligence), and the NAMUR standardization work — alarm management, the digital type plate, the autonomous plant milestones. The interviews give practitioners and vendors space to explain their strategies, and the event coverage — the NAMUR annual meetings, the HERMES AWARD, the SECURITY UNTER KONTROLLE congress — documents the community's gatherings. The atpinfo.de portal's daily news extends the coverage between issues: industry business news, event announcements, and the technical developments too fast for print.

Organization and Ownership

atp is published by the Vulkan-Verlag — the technical publisher whose portfolio includes the automation title and whose congress business (SECURITY UNTER KONTROLLE and others) extends the brand into events. The editorial leadership is the magazine's signature: two editors-in-chief, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Mike Barth for Science and Dr.-Ing. Thomas Tauchnitz for Industry, working in close coordination, with Jonas Völker as editorial manager (Redaktionsleiter) and editors such as Simon Meyer covering the news flow. The peer-review process draws on experts from science and industry — the university professors, institute researchers and industrial practitioners whose reviews give the main articles their authority, and whose own research networks supply the magazine's pipeline of technical contributions.

Commercially, atp follows the B2B technical-press model: subscriptions from the automation community's companies and institutions, advertising from the automation vendors — the instrumentation, control-system, software and robotics suppliers whose customers read the magazine — and the congress and event revenues. The free trial-issue offer ("Bestellen Sie Ihr kostenloses Probeheft") reflects the subscription marketing standard in the trade press. The audience — automation engineers, plant operators, digitalization officers and researchers — is the producing industry's technical decision-maker community, concentrated and commercially valuable.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is atpinfo.de, the knowledge platform for automation technology and digital transformation — carrying the daily news flow (from the HERMES AWARD announcements and NAMUR program news to the chemical industry's wage agreements and the machinery sector's utilization data), the issue presentations with their top topics, the product pages for the atp edition archive, and the peer-reviewed articles' PDF downloads. The portal's news sections — Aktuell, Wirtschaft & Unternehmen, Veranstaltungen — deliver the continuous coverage the automation market's pace demands.

The congress business extends the brand into events: SECURITY UNTER KONTROLLE, the IT/OT security congress organized by the Vulkan-Verlag with its program board from science and industry, offers contributors the publication of their papers in the atp magazin — the editorial-event integration that characterizes the brand. The newsletters deliver the news selection to the automation community's inboxes, and the social channels — including the congress's LinkedIn presence — serve the professional networking. After its decades of publication, atp operates as the automation community's cross-media platform: the magazine for the peer-reviewed depth, the portal for the daily news flow, and the congresses for the physical gathering — the leading medium of the process and manufacturing industries, in print, online and in person, wherever automation is engineered.