"The aim is to provide holistic solutions for today's and future challenges in control cabinet construction by networking technology and expertise across all process steps," explains Volker Bibelhausen, Chief Technology Officer and Spokesman of the Executive Board at Weidmüller.

Holistic view of the value creation process
Digitalization offers many levers for optimizing production processes. However, productivity can only be increased if the individual aspects of the value creation process are viewed holistically. If the existing optimization potential that lies in the interfaces between the individual process steps is exploited, enormous increases in efficiency can be achieved. "Enclosure construction in particular, with its high proportion of manual activities today, offers very promising approaches here. This ranges from component selection and the prefabrication of wire harnesses, equipment and housings to assisted final assembly and testing prior to commissioning," explains Matijas Meyer, CEO of the Komax Group.

The companies' expertise complements each other
In this context, Weidmüller is contributing its expertise in the automatic assembly and labeling of terminal strips as well as manual activities. Zuken is contributing its expertise in digital development data, which is provided for automatic processing and used on Komax machines for fully automated wire assembly, while Armbruster Engineering is complementing the initiative with its many years of expertise in assisted assembly.

"Enclosure construction finds itself in a distinct field of tension: an almost unmanageable number of technical features with fast-moving customer requirements, high cost and price pressure with tight deadlines. This can only succeed if the possibilities of automation and digitalization are transferred into an interplay of product, process and production equipment. The combination of fully automated solutions and digital assistance systems that guide employees during manual assembly and control and monitor the tools used are a key success factor in practice," explains Henning Vogler, Managing Director at Armbruster Engineering.

The digital twin as a basis
The basis for networking the process steps is the digital twin, a complete digital description of the enclosure and its components, which can be used to control the various process steps. Joachim Frank, Managing Director of Zuken E3, comments: "Through targeted collaboration in the 'Smart Cabinet Building' initiative, we want to make our contribution to unlocking substantial optimization potential in enclosure construction based on the digital twin." as