Powered up and full of opportunities – how manufacturing companies can pick up speed

The energy transition is a mammoth task to perform. However, the opportunities facing manufacturing companies are huge, for instance, accelerated grid expansion and smart energy management. In the new issue of the “be top” magazine, the Friedhelm Loh Group shows how manufacturing companies can bring more speed to the restructuring of energy systems and more transparency to energy management. In interviews, best-practice examples, and reference stories, Rittal, Eplan, Cideon, German Edge Cloud, Stahlo, and LKH report on how they support their customers with expert knowledge and innovations – for example in the digitalisation, standardisation and automation of value creation processes, as well as in green steel and plastics technology.

Haiger, 04 May 2023 – Rarely have the plant engineering and manufacturing sectors ever needed smart solutions as quickly and urgently to deal with a wide range of complex requirements. But how can the tasks of the energy transition be solved? Where are the opportunities? What needs to be done? The cover story of the new be top issue shows where companies can really “invest energy” to solve the current challenges.

“From our point of view, the basic principle is to think, automate and digitalise along our customers’ processes, and then create transparency. This approach will help reconfigure even complex systems more quickly and get them geared up for the future,” explains Uwe Scharf, Managing Director of Business Units (CBO) at Rittal in an interview. The critical factors are end-to-end hardware and software solutions that increase the speed of infrastructure expansion – from energy generation and storage to grid expansion and sector coupling to charging facilities for electric mobility.

Smart Factory: Escaping the energy trap!

With the energy crisis currently hitting the industry hard, manufacturing managers need to find answers to a variety of questions faster than expected on their way to smart production: How, for example, can energy flows be mapped, energy guzzlers identified, energy supply managed better – and move energy-intensive production processes to times when energy is cheaper? If data from plants, products and manufacturing processes, together with their digital twins, are linked with the energy data, completely new perspectives for increasing energy transparency open up. Factory operators could then monitor, manage and, in the future, control their energy consumption with precision, including the carbon footprint of each component manufactured. The magazine illustrates what this looks like – using the example of the Rittal Smart Factory in Haiger with ONCITE DPS (Digital Production Systems) by German Edge Cloud.

Other topics in the latest be top issue include:

• “Interface power”: The Cideon Conify solution shows how sales configuration, automated CAD data, order-specific engineering, and parts lists go hand in hand.
• “How to ramp up speed”: Eplan and Rittal can help companies right from the start whenever they need assistance with their value chain consulting, designing expertise, and automation know-how.
• “We research at system level”: The energy transition is decentralised and is taking place in distribution grids. TH Lübeck is examining how charging infrastructures can be integrated into this. The result of their work is a rapid charging station with a charging capacity of up to 1 MW.
• “At the heart of it all is the digital twin”: Each year, Siemens WKC builds around 21,000 control panels and approximately 29,000 small enclosures. be top provides insights into the digital processes of Europe’s market leader.
• “Composing instead of programming“: IT in the industry is certainly undergoing a complete transformation at present, with a switch underway from closed to open software architecture. Platforms such as the ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS) introduced by German Edge Cloud are showing the way.
• “Going from good to better”: As a plastics expert, LKH shows how products can be systematically streamlined together with customers – in the direction of sustainability, economic efficiency, functionality, and product safety.
• “On a roll”: As a steel service centre, Stahlo has concluded a partnering agreement with Salzgitter Flachstahl and secured the availability of “Green Steel” from 2025.
• “Using a robot in biology lessons”: Fiona, a 15-year-old girl, can take part in school lessons by using her tablet to connect to the so-called ‘telepresence avatar’. Help has been made possible by a donation from the Rittal Foundation.

You can find the online magazine and the PDF of the new be top issue here: https://www.rittal.com/com-en/Company/Magazin-be-top