Innovation – B2B Influencer

The Influencers

Sharing, tweeting, posting, liking – experts in digital trends are playing an increasingly important role as influencers. They set the tone, operate independently and can take whole trade fairs by storm while offering advice on a uniquely personal level. How can companies put influencers to good use in the B2B domain?

Cool head, warm heart

Climate change is undoubtedly sweeping across the political agenda. Enough said? Not necessarily: “The need to protect the environment is not up for debate – but the question of how to do it is.” Finally, Nicola Salandini speaks truth to what has become a heated global debate.

Innovation – Eplan Fly high

Flying observatory

The SOFIA research aircraft records infrared radiation to keep a close eye on space. A solution from Eplan is now being used to provide the complex electrical engineering.

Snapshots

Hybrid optimisation: The Great Lakes on the Canada-United States border are a unique natural space and economic region, where the native flora and fauna meet local shipping traffic. To protect the environment and cut the fuel consumption of shipping on the lakes, Canadian company Canal Marine & Industrial is developing hybrid drives for ships. Thanks to these drives, new tugs owned by Great Lakes Towing can operate for extended periods with their main engine switched off. To house the new drive technology, Canal Marine & Industrial is using a flexible system with modular enclosures from Rittal that can be connected and bayed with each other. What’s more, the compact enclosures make optimum use of the tight space on the tugboats and are extremely robust and adaptable. www.canal.ca © plainpicture/Böhm Monika

The stage is set: It takes a whole lot of painstaking work to get a film ready for its premiere. For over 100 years, film technology company Arri has been putting cinema’s luminaries in the right light. Equipment from this global, Munich-based company is used in many big blockbuster productions, from Hollywood to Bollywood. Arri is best known for high-quality camera and lighting systems, but is also active in post-production for films and TV series. Digital film and production data needs to be stored in a data center as quickly as possible after filming, as the volumes of data involved place very high demands on bandwidths and latency times. In its new data center, Arri uses components from Rittal such as IT racks, cool-ing and monitoring systems. Arri and Rittal also worked together to develop and implement the security concept on site. www.arri.com © Getty Images/Cavan Images

All sorted: Even today, people still eagerly wait to see what the postman brings. Whether it’s a letter to a host family or a postcard from a holiday, sending letters, packages and bag-gage around the world by plane is a major logistical undertaking. Siemens Logistics has established itself as a leading international supplier of sorting technology to the world’s largest airports. Since 2016, Siemens Logistics Portugal has been using a specially developed configuration solution based on Eplan Electric P8 for the end-to-end digital documentation and management of engineering processes and data. The software forms a control interface be-tween the various processes. The transparent and centralised system prevents errors and ensures no delays occur during manufacturing or when servicing the system.. www.siemens-logistics.com © plainpicture/Frank Herfort

Reliable steel production – At first glance, steel production seems to be all about flying sparks and glaring light. But take a look behind the scenes and you will discover a sophisticated IT infrastructure. thyssenkrupp Steel, one of the world’s leading suppliers of high-quality flat steel, uses modular, preconfigured edge data centres from Rittal in its operations. The two companies teamed up to develop custom solutions based on Rittal data centre containers (RDCC) directly at the production sites, enabling fast, secure and cost-effective IT capacity to be established at each and every location. The partners are continuing their work on the container-based edge data centres so that further custom requirements can be integrated into the solution in the future. © Getty Images/Sean Gallup/Staff

Wood that sounds good: Italy is famed for its passion for good food, emotional football and musical finesse. Indeed, the region around Milan is steeped in culture and has played a big part in shaping the history of the violin, being home to prestigious makers such as Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri del Gesù. Some 125 years ago, Angelo Cremona S.p.A in the nearby city of Monza started to specialise in woodworking machines. Back then it was a pioneer and, to this day, the long-standing company is still leading progress. A satisfied customer of the TS 8 enclosure from Rittal, Angelo Cremona has become the first company in Italy to roll out its successor, the VX25. www.angelo-cremona.com © Getty Images/Westend61

A clean delight: A juicy hot dog, crisp on the outside and soft and smooth on the inside, wrapped in a slightly sweet roll and smothered in an array of toppings – it’s the trademark snack of North America. Canadians love them and are particularly partial to them at sporting events such as ice hockey matches and baseball games. To achieve product quality of hot dogs, the hygiene has to be top notch, too. That is why a Canadian food producer uses Hygienic Design enclosures from Rittal, which ensure clinical cleanliness and reliability – two critical considerations in food production. © Gallery Stock/Marcus Nilsson

Tradition meets technology: Row upon row of solar panels have taken up residence where fishermen once went to work. In many parts of China, it is not unusual to stumble on a sea of photovoltaic plants. One of China’s leading thin-film solar cell suppliers is Hanergy. These thin-film solar cells are much lighter than normal solar panels and more flexible. Hanergy uses Eplan engineering software and a Perforex system from Rittal Automation Systems in the manufacture of its products. www.hanergy.eu © Alamy Stock Photo/Top Phot Corporation

As the wind blows – If you’ve ever stood at the foot of a wind turbine and looked up high above you, you’ll no doubt have been blown away by the technical construction of these 150-metre-high towers with 60-metre-long rotor blades. Shanghai Electric Wind Power Group from China is a leading manufacturer and supplier of these gigantic structures. The company produces onshore and offshore wind turbines, deploying software from Eplan during the electrical planning – Eplan Electric P8 and Eplan Pro Panel, for example. © Gallery Stock/Greg Girard

A bright idea – Deutsche Telekom is using multifunctional enclosures from Rittal in its drive to expand the broadband network. The aim is to provide 80 per cent of households in Germany with high-speed internet based on fibre-optic technology by the end of 2019. The upgraded network will be capable of sending even massive volumes of data at the speed of light. In support of this project, Rittal has supplied the telecommunications giant with 34,000 modular outdoor enclosures over the past four years. © Michael Koch

Top performance on the high seas – Approximately two thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. Nowhere is that clearer than on the three huge oceans that encapsulate land mass around the world. And yet humankind has only researched and explored a tiny proportion of the Earth’s seas. To help change that, Canadian company Aspin Kemp and Associates develops energy and drive technologies that are also suitable for maritime applications. The company, established on Prince Edward Island in 1996, pursues its aims with the aid of TS 8 enclosures from Rittal, primarily due to the comprehensive certification they offer. Thanks to the high level of standardisation and flexibility of the Rittal solution, customers – particularly those in the very price-sensitive oil and gas market – benefit from low maintenance costs, excellent reliability, energy savings and low emissions. © Getty Images/Cultura/Monty Rakusen

Ordered, packed and delivered – Global e-commerce has experienced a long-term growth trend for years. Last year alone, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to more than a trillion euros. Whether books, movies, clothing or electrical appliances: Everything must go smoothly in the logistics centres so that the desired items are delivered to the customers as quickly as possible. That is why online retailers are favouring prevention rather than reaction. For instance in China, Europe and the United States, thousands of cooling units in the logistics centres ensure a fail-safe cooling and a trouble-free process. The maintenance and servicing of the equipment is provided by Rittal. © Getty Images/Getty Images News/Peter Macdiarmid

A passion for detail – Juicy ossobuco, creamy risotto alla Milanese or tender vitello tonnato – there is hardly a country in the world that celebrates the joy of eating good food as much as Italy. To make sure that their visitors are able to taste “la dolce vita” as part of their experience, many professional Italian chefs rely on electrical appliances from Electrolux Professional. The company’s dishwashers, stoves and steam ovens are also used in hotels, bars and restaurants all over the world. When designing the electrical components of its products, Electrolux Professional in Italy uses software from Eplan. The end result is a high level of standardisation and automation thanks to the use of macros and improved precision from using digital prototypes. © Getty Images/DigitalVision/Klaus Vedfelt

Bringing light into the darkness: Dark passageways, bizarre rock formations, damp rock faces and an almost eerie silence – exploring a cave is an unforgettable experience. To make such adventures even better for visitors, German company Cave Lighting has been installing state-of-the-art lighting, music, monitoring and power supply systems in publicly accessible show caves since 2005. In doing so, the company uses robust AE compact enclosures from Rittal, as the stainless steel systems are ideally equipped to withstand the tough climatic conditions underground. Besides the Kluterthöhle caves in Germany, Cave Lighting has also brought underground lakes, petrified creatures and stunning corals into view at the Caves of Han in Belgium, the Balcarka Cave in the Czech Republic and the Caves of Is Zuddas in Italy. © Michael Koch

Take a look: Those who dare look down upon the clouds certainly shouldn’t suffer from vertigo. Starting from this, and assuming you can get over any fear of heights you might have, pay a visit to the 148th storey of the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, where you’ll have to use the world’s highest revolving door. The door was made by Boon Edam, the market leader for entrance solutions, headquartered in Edam, Netherlands. On the IT side of things, the company relies on an integrated PLM solution based on SAP 4/HANA – with support from Cideon. The core of the solution at Boon Edam is to automatically integrate design drawings into SAP and to create a central source for locally created data – a “single source of truth” – that can be accessed throughout the company. Moving forward, drawings and relevant documents for procurement and offers management will also be automatically generated in accordance with defined rules. © National Geographic Creative/Alamy Stock Photo

Hygienic production of goodies: When Daniel Peter constructed a chocolate factory on the outskirts of the Swiss town of Orbe in 1901, he could hardly have ever imagined it would play a key role in a global corporation in 2017. A merger in 1929 saw the factory become part of Nestlé. Nowadays, around 1,500 employees work at the Orbe site, manufacturing Nespresso capsules among other things. It is also home to the Nestlé Product Technology Centre (PTC), where coffee, breakfast drinks and infant food are developed. Hygiene-focused designs are particularly important in this environment. Which explains why the factory opted for the Rittal Hygienic Design enclosures, command panels and terminal boxes. They enable perfectly hygienic manufacturing processes. In addition, as an in-house innovation driver, the PTC is currently taking part in a one-year practical test run that pits a Blue e cooling unit against one of the latest generation Blue e+ units to compare energy consumption under real-life conditions. © Fabrice Coffrini/Staff/getty images

Peak power

Totally top!

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Bauer Systeme

A far-sighted trio

– Solutions across the globe

Problems solved with products from Friedhelm Loh Group

– Chindata hyperscale data centre

IT systems completed in record time

– Plastics in automotive industry

Tailoring the process to the customer

Innovation – How does Cideon recognizes a pattern in a noise?

Artificial Intelligence in Action

Whether machine learning, chatbots or automated guided vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI) is breaking all the records in a whole range of fields. The Budarhals hydropower plant in Iceland is a perfect example of how AI can also generate added value for companies in the mechanical engineering sector.