Rittal opens innovation center in Haiger

The aim with the center is to boost productivity, to consistently innovate and thus manufacture and deliver even faster: The challenges in control and switchgear manufacturing are significant, just like those in mechanical engineering. Further gains in productivity can only be achieved through consistent standardisation and optimising entire value chains, as well as through data consistency. But the challenges presented by each manufacturing operation are as individual as the companies themselves. In order to offer a solution for customers, Rittal and its sister companies Eplan and Cideon, have now established a completely new Innovation Center in Haiger, central Hesse. At the Rittal Innovation Center, customers, developers and salespeople from Rittal and Eplan will be able to experience and understand – at first hand – solutions for increasing the efficiency of the entire value chain, or to analyse, experiment, and development new ideas. “We do not want to just show and explain innovations to our customers at the Innovation Center. On the contrary, we will be developing solutions together with them and continuing to adapt our products to the demands of the market”, explained Jan-Henry Schall, Head of the Rittal Innovation Center. The Innovation Center reflects the value chain in control and switchgear manufacturing, with machinery, data and products: “In addition to providing training sessions for customer groups, we will also be teaching those staff who have contact to our customers, so that they can become familiar with their problems. “Developers can meddle around on the machines and equipment directly, come up with new ideas and try them out.” The Innovation Center forms part of a completely new training concept based on making Industry 4.0 (the Internet of Things) in control and switchgear manufacturing understandable in a “hands-on” way, Mr. Schall added. “Together with our partners, customers and suppliers, we are looking for permanent solutions at the Rittal Innovation Center in Haiger in order to streamline value chains in control and switchgear manufacturing,” added Jan-Henry Schall, summarising the project at the new Innovation Center: “It’s not just concerned with classical analyses of processes that are absolutely essential and with a firm basis in theory, but it’s all about a living innovation process in terms of Industry 4.0.”