Rutronik establishes Power & Lighting Center

Rutronik Elektronische Bauelemente considers itself to be the competence interface between manufacturers and customers in the rapidly-growing and changing LED lighting market. In its newly-founded Center of Competence Power & Lighting, this broadline distributor has bundled its expertise in this segment and offers its customers throughout Europe a central contact point around the use of LEDs in lighting applications. The CoC Power & Lighting has in the meantime become Rutronik's fifth Competence Center and, like all CoCs in the pan-European matrix structure, it integrates the Field Application Engineers, Product and Line Management as well as the Tools and Applications Center. This networking guarantees customers a holistic offer: from profound special knowledge in the area of Power & Lighting on the one hand and a broad portfolio of products and consulting services which also includes passive and electromechanical components on the other hand. According to a survey conducted in the context of the Rutronik Power & Lighting series of seminars, about 35 percent of those questioned consider support with the development of lighting applications by the distributor to be desirable. The CoC Power & Lighting forms the second step within the Rutronik Power & Lighting campaign, which this broadliner already initiated at the beginning of the year with a series of Workshops in 17 major European cities. Rutronik indicated that 30 percent of the approximately 400 Workshop participants are new customers. About half of them stated that they could already use the information offered in current projects in practice. The broad use of LEDs and the paradigm change from the incandescent bulb to the LED has created completely new target groups in addition to the classical electronics customers – mostly without the necessary prior electrical knowledge – including architects and light designers. The requirements on lighting developers range, in addition to the selection of suitable lighting equipment, especially to appropriate control and thermal management within the application. These main features also form the key contents of the Power & Lighting courses. The manufacturers' core competences are found in the development and production of new products. Topical training and transfer of knowledge from their side cannot be conducted on a broad level. For this reason, “Rutronik sees itself as an important competence link between manufacturers and customers“, explains Markus Krieg, Marketing Director Semiconductors at Rutronik. “We have the necessary structures, technical expertise and the practical experience from numerous design-in projects in this area in order to provide the best possible support to light developers with applications development and to create the necessary mass of product know-how and transparency through the communication of knowledge." The Rutronik Optoelectronic and Power Supply lines include Osram Opto Semiconductors, Everlight, LiteOn, Vishay, Infineon, Microchip, ST Microelectronics, Diodes Inc. and Vogt Elektronik.