Weidmüller setting up Smart Connectivity Competence Center at CIIT in Lemgo

Lemgo/Detmold, 15 October 2018. The Detmold-based electrical engineering company Weidmüller is expanding its presence within the CENTRUM INDUSTRIAL IT (CIIT) independent research and development centre at the Innovation Campus Lemgo. Weidmüller is setting up a Smart Connectivity Competence Center at the CIIT in order to develop innovations in the field of electrical connectivity and to increase its focus on issues relating to industrial infrastructure. Ten employees from the Device and Field Connectivity division will work even more closely within the CIIT partner network in the future. This is in line with Weidmüller's strategy and follows the company's announcement in December 2017 regarding its plans to increase its activities in Lemgo and promote the development of the Innovation Campus Lemgo. "The aim of the Competence Center is to drive forward research and development relating to smart industrial electrical connectivity, the change of industrial infrastructure and the digital description of products", explains Jörg Scheer, Head of the Device and Field Connectivity division at Weidmüller.

Image caption: Standing in the Smart Connectivity Competence Center at the CENTRUM INDUSTRIAL IT (CIIT), Dr Sascha Nolte, Head of the Smart Connectivity Competence Center, shows what the employees will be working on in Lemgo in the future.

This sees Weidmüller expand, in particular, upon its over ten years of cooperation with the CIIT Science-to-Business centre. The Competence Center will also be able to benefit from optimal support thanks to the proximity to the SmartFactoryOWL, the resident institute Fraunhofer Application Center IOSB-INA and the Institute of Industrial Information Technology (inIT) at the OWL University of Applied Sciences, as well as its participation in the "it's OWL" network. Future development will focus on the issue of industrial infrastructure for power, signals and data, as the process of digitalisation is leading to continual changes in business models, products and working processes as well as in the collaboration between employees and with customers. This leads to the creation of new solutions, products, services and business models, which allow for networking along the value chain. "The trend towards digitalisation in industry requires new solutions, even for components that have previously been purely electromechanical in nature. Plug-in connectors are becoming smart and behave intelligently and will take on innovative additional functions in the future, and they have to operate in infrastructure networks that use DC voltage instead of AC voltage for power distribution", says Scheer. "With the Smart Connectivity Competence Center, we are responding to this development and are intensifying the development of smart plug-in connector solutions and infrastructure solutions".

Weidmüller has already been represented at CIIT in Lemgo for many years in the area of technology development, and the employees from the division mentioned above will serve to further boost the company's presence at the centre. In the future, these employees will work together in close collaboration with the on-site research institutes with the aim of developing the technologies to create market-ready solutions in collaboration with customers.