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The magazine of Friedhelm Loh Group

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Experience – Engineering Control panel design and production at Siemens WKC

It’s all about the digital twin

You don’t need a crystal ball to see into the (near) future of panel building and switchgear manufacturing. All you need to do is visit the Siemens Systems Engineering Plant (WKC) in Chemnitz. Each year, the WKC builds around 21,000 control panels and approximately 29,000 small enclosures (predominantly on a batch-size-1 basis), making it one of Europe’s market leaders. The plant is largely digitalised throughout, all the way from processing customer data to delivering the control panels. In this article, Hans-Peter Kasparick and Mirko Löffler, who are responsible for digital strategy and manufacturing engineering, provide an insight into their processes and collaboration with Rittal and Eplan.

Teamwork – Society Rittal Foundation

Using a robot in biology lessons

Fiona has cancer. That’s why a little white robot is now going to school for her every day. The 15-year-old can use her tablet to connect to the so-called ‘telepresence avatar’ from the hospital or at home, and so take part in lessons and even talk to her friends. This has been made possible by a donation from the Rittal Foundation.

Experience – Arc fault protection thanks to Rittal and DEHN

Active protection

The lights suddenly go out at the logistics centre of an online mail order company. The package sorting equipment, storage and retrieval systems, conveying units and picking stations are without power. Everything has ground to a halt – it’s a nightmare scenario! The cause of the power failure could be an arc flash in switchgear. How, though, can failures of this kind be prevented or at least limited in their duration?

Innovation – Eplan TH Lübeck – a fully thought-through charging infrastructure

“We research at system level”

The energy revolution is decentralised and is taking place in distribution grids. The “Department for Electromobility and Power Electronics” at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Lübeck (TH Lübeck) is researching how charging infrastructures can be integrated into these. The result of their work is a rapid charging station with a charging capacity of up to 1 MW. This is application-oriented research at a level unparalleled in Europe. It is made possible through partnerships with industrial companies such as Eplan. We discussed this with Professor Roland Tiedemann and Clemens Kerssen.

Innovation – Rittal The challenge of the energy transition

Powered up

Although the energy transition is crucial for securing a stable, environmentally friendly and prosperous future, it is and always will be a Herculean task. According to a study from Norway, barely any aspect of the energy sector will be the same by 2050. This also means that the opportunities for industrial companies are huge, for instance in terms of accelerated grid expansion and smart energy management. The key levers are end-to-end digitalisation and standardisation.

Teamwork – Commitment Commitment by the Debora Foundation in India

Rays of hope for people in need

They are losing their few possessions, the roof over their heads, their jobs and their way of life. In India, as in all parts of the world, COVID-19 is pushing people into situations of dire need – especially those who were already living on the edge of society before the pandemic. The Debora Foundation is therefore providing rapid emergency aid to landless inhabitants and people of the lowest caste, the Dalit, to help them survive the devastating aftermath of COVID-19. We report on an on-site visit.

Experience – Information technology New IT infrastructure at tyre manufacturing company

Failsafe

A fire breaks out in the data centre – firefighters arrive on the scene and turn on their hoses. Within a matter of seconds, servers and IT infrastructure are all deluged with water – it’s an image IT administrators aren’t keen to dwell on. At Ralf Bohle, there’s no chance of flames taking hold in the server room. The Schwalbe bicycle tyre manufacturer has made safety and security a priority and opted for IT infrastructure from Rittal.

Reading tips

1

Pit stop for 16 TB of data

2

Twin by twin

3

Revolutionising steel production

4

Green computing power at the fjord

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Even more scope

Innovation – Eplan Automation in plant engineering

How to ramp up speed

In mechanical and plant engineering the primary focus has long since shifted away from being “just” on product quality. It’s all about the process. It has to be simpler, more efficient and, most importantly, faster. The only way to achieve that is by ingeniously combining hardware and software, through digitalisation and automation. When companies need assistance with that, Eplan and Rittal can help right from the start, with their value chain consulting and engineering expertise and automation know-how.

Experience – Energy Rittal Service – practical tips for IT managers

Saving energy can be easier than you might think

Data centre operators are currently under huge pressure to cut energy consumption, but what practical steps can they take and what impact do these measures have? The Rittal Service team has some concrete suggestions. Besides the little “quick wins” that can be achieved just by adjusting the cooling parameters slightly, free cooling in particular can soon deliver measurable results.

Innovation – Cideon Process excellence thanks to Cideon interface

The direct route into the world of SAP

Using engineering data directly in SAP delivers process excellence and boosts performance. The ECTR interface between Eplan and SAP developed by Cideon has enabled RAMPF Production Systems GmbH & Co. KG to eliminate error sources while at the same time networking its engineering and business worlds.

Innovation – Cideon End-to-end configuration – from incoming orders to final delivery

Interface power

Companies are increasingly configuring products that have multiple variants, but this involves complex in-house mechanical and plant engineering processes. In many cases, CAD data is not factored in. When using Cideon Conify, sales configuration, automated CAD data, engineering-to-order and bills of materials now go hand in hand – the ideal combination of CONfiguration and CONnection.

Stahlo secures supplies of green steel

On a roll

Experience
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Rittal opens its first Application Centers

Experience value creation live

Experience – H2 Core Systems

Hydrogen is go!

Innovation – Switching to web technologies

Composing instead of programming

Innovation – Stahlo SteelGate

Carbon tracking for green steel

Experience – Engineering AuCom opts for automation with Eplan and Rittal

A flying start

Can it be done in nine months? Nine months to build and supply 400 switchgear units containing soft starters for electric motors for one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Egypt – imagine doing that just two years after launching your own panel-building operations. That is no problem for AuCom Global Solutions! There was just one condition – extensive standardisation and automation.

Innovation – Eplan ENGINEERING

The new Eplan Platform 2023

The new Eplan Platform 2023 is now ramping up the pace in engineering.

Video

Cool when the heat is on - Interview with Björn von Frieling

Caution - supply bottleneck! - Interview with Mark Antonius Behler from BEUMER

Caution - supply bottleneck! - Interview with Reinhard H. Agnesens from Blumenbecker

Sustainable enclosure cooling with the most efficient cooling unit series in the world

Automated driving - IT infrastructure for BMW vehicle tests

Energy in a box

Streamlining processes with Rittal and Eplan solutions

The new stand-alone enclosure.

Whether safely sheltered or in rough environments: Individually configured solutions for IT Containers made to fit into any place.

Man vs. machine – who wins? The LCA Group shows the advantages of using the Perforex

All clean: During replacements of Canada’s largest sewage plant, Metro Vancouver opted for enclosure and power distribution solutions from Eplan.

Precise production of the VX25

Planning and realisation with Eplan Pro Panel and and Perforex BC

How the control and switchgear manufacturer Meurer modernizes its enclsoure construction with Eplan and Rittal solutions.

How the VX25 large enclosure system from Rittal plays to its strengths in the Gotthard Tunnel.

How IT infrastructure fro Rittal secutres procedures at Dubrovnik airport.

Rittal in use in the TecFabrik at Daimler.

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LKH Kunststoffwerk

Get going

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Stahlo Stahlservice

The steel sector is going smart

Experience
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Rittal Service – replacing cooling units

One nice surprise after another

Experience
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Rittal Energy & Power Solutions

Systematically shaping the energy revolution

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