From 13th to 15th January 1987 425 experts from 18 countries met for the 1^st International Colloquium "Industrial Floors '87" at the Technical Academy Esslingen to exchange and broaden their knowledge in this field. This was the occasion for considering what an industrial floor actually is and its significance for the construction industry as a whole. Many years ago H.-O. Lamprecht said:

In general our universities and colleges quite simply forget about the whole subject. This is a first answer to our question. If we attempt to define the term "industrial floor", we discover that these floors have important similarities with roads because they are, among other things, inplant transportation routes. Thus the definition of concrete surfacing borrowed from road construction is useful here:

Here we already have the basis for a definition of the term. However, an industrial floor, which must be as flat as possible, is not only used for transporting goods. The goods are also manufactured on it and the finished products are subsequently stored on the same or other floors.

The term changes like a kaleidoscope when it is viewed from different perspectives. However, we shall not pursue this point further here and for the sake of simplicity we define all floors which are not in the home and are not roads as industrial floors.