Weidmüller (company)

Weidmüller Interface GmbH & Co. KG
legal form	GmbH & Co. KG
founding	1850
Seat	Detmold , Germany
management	Volker Bibelhausen, Board Spokesman ; Timo Berger, Chief Sales Officer; André Sombecki, CFO;
Number of employees	5,000
sales	EUR 830 million
Branch	Electrical engineering
Website	www.weidmueller.de
	As of April 2020

Customer and technology center in Detmold

The Weidmüller Interface GmbH & Co. KG is a German company in the field of electrical connection technology and electronics. The head office is in Detmold in the East Westphalia-Lippe region in North Rhine-Westphalia .

The company has production facilities, sales companies and agencies in 80 countries. In the 2019 financial year, Weidmüller achieved sales of around 830 million euros. The company employs around 5,000 people worldwide. With its products, Weidmüller is predominantly active in mechanical engineering , the process industry , energy generation and renewable energies , traffic engineering , building infrastructure and in the field of device manufacturers.

The company has been dealing with Industry 4.0 since 2013 . Weidmüller is involved in the leading-edge cluster it's OWL as well as numerous other research collaborations such as the Robotation Academy Foshan, the Smart Factory KL and the Centrum Industrial IT in Lemgo.

history

In 1850, CA Weidmüller was founded as a company in the textile industry by Carl August Weidmüller in Reichenbrand near Chemnitz. Gottfried Gläsel became a partner in the company's management in 1931 and became sole owner and managing director in 1937. The company name CA Weidmüller was retained for reasons of recognition. In 1943 the product range changed due to the Second World War . While looking for suitable products for his company, Gottfried Gläsel met Wilhelm Staffel, who as a development engineer at AEG was involved in developing the first automatic machine controls (e.g. for milling machines). The collaboration with Wilhelm Staffel leads to the production of the first “Staffel- Klemme ” for AEG in Berlin.

The resumption of contact with Wilhelm Staffel in 1947 led to a contract that formed the basis for the re-establishment of CA Weidmüller in Berlebeck near Detmold in 1948 . In the same year, production of the first plastic-insulated modular terminal was started. In 1952 Weidmüller exhibited for the first time at the Hanover Fair . In the same year, the "switchgear series terminal" (SAK) made of thermosetting plastics as an insulating material and a patented steel tension bracket as a clamping system was developed.

In the following years the company expanded its international activities and established itself in Europe as well as in America and Asia. Weidmüller is now represented in over 80 countries around the world. Of these, in Germany, the Czech Republic, Romania, China and Brazil with a production facility and in Germany, Spain, Australia, China, Brazil and Singapore with a development center.

In 1959 the first foreign sales company was founded in England . In 1967 sales companies followed in Austria , France and Italy . In 1978 Spain was added, followed by Sweden and Belgium in the following years . With the founding of Thuringian Weidmüller GmbH in 1991, the company also expanded into Eastern and Central Europe. The youngest member of the group in Europe is the sales office in Switzerland .

In 1975, activities were expanded to include Brazil , Canada and the USA . The presence on the American continent was supplemented in 1994 by a sales company in Mexico . After the sale of the sales companies, Weidmüller bought them back from the American company Rockwell Automation , Inc. in 2017 .

In 1980 a sales company was founded in Japan , through which Weidmüller established its presence in Asia. A sales company in Singapore followed shortly afterwards . The company has also been continuously expanding its presence in China since 1994 . Group companies and sales companies in Hong Kong , Shanghai and Malaysia complete the presence in the region. Today around 1,000 employees work at two locations and in 16 sales offices.

digitalization

Driven among other things by the development of Industry 4.0 , in addition to internationalization, digitization is becoming increasingly important in the company. Weidmüller sees itself as a provider and user of Industry 4.0 and uses digitization to increase competitiveness, flexibility and minimize waste. Since the company manufactures numerous products for the distribution of energy, signals and data, digitization has a major impact on the portfolio.

automation

Weidmüller offers specific solutions with which manufacturing companies can prepare for the requirements of Industry 4.0. In 2013, Weidmüller presented a remote I / O system for the first time at the SPS IPC / Drives in Nuremberg, which has been continuously expanded. Since 2018, u-mation, an open, platform-independent automation kit, has made it possible to set up individual control solutions. With Industrial Analytics, Weidmüller also introduced software that enables predictive maintenance, predictive quality and new business models. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are used here .

Locations

Detmold

Klingenbergstrasse

After CA Weidmüller was re-established in Berlebeck near Detmold in 1948 , the company moved to Detmold on Klingenbergstrasse in 1975 . This was Weidmüller's main headquarters until the Customer & Technology Center was built. A large part of production is located here, consisting of several buildings.

Customer & Technology Center

The customer and technology center was opened in Detmold at the beginning of 2019 after almost two years of construction. Around 450 employees of the electrical engineering company work on around 11,500 square meters of floor space. The planning and construction of the new building focused in particular on the aspects of sustainability , energy efficiency and modern workplace design. The customer and technology center has office and conference rooms in which employees can work together on an interdisciplinary basis. At the time of construction in 2018, the building's energy consumption was 55 percent below the statutory requirements of the Energy Saving Ordinance from 2016. This is achieved, among other things, by a photovoltaic system on the roof, a geothermal field and energy-saving technology inside the building.

academy

Weidmüller has been running an academy for training and further education of employees at the Detmold location since 2003. All activities for qualification, knowledge building in the company and knowledge exchange with external institutions, universities and partners are bundled there. She is active regionally and nationally as well as internationally. In 2013, the academy at the Detmold location was named a “place of progress” by the NRW state government for innovative concepts in the exchange of knowledge between business and science. In 2018 the academy celebrated its 15th anniversary. In addition to the academy in Germany, the Academy Asia was opened in Shanghai in October 2011.

Niemeierstrasse

The Niemeierstrasse plant is an 8,200 square meter production hall at the Detmold location. Technologies were used for this, which allow production with minimized energy consumption. Electromechanical components are manufactured in the building.

Wutha Farnroda

The production company Thüringische Weidmüller GmbH was founded in Wutha-Farnroda in 1990. On March 5, 2010, this part of the business in Erfurt received the "Thuringian State Prize for Quality".

Paderborn

A new building is being built in Paderborn on the Zukunftsmeile. Weidmüller, the University of Paderborn, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Design IEM and S&N Invent GmbH rent space in Zukunftsmeile 2. There will be space for 250 employees from the Automation Products and Solutions division. Weidmüller is also planning its own start-up production and a development laboratory there.

Dresden

In 2016, Weidmüller took over Bosch Rexroth Monitoring Systems GmbH from Bosch Rexroth . After the takeover, the company was named "Weidmüller Monitoring Systems". Condition monitoring systems for wind turbines are developed, manufactured and sold at this location.

Marktheidenfeld

In 2018, Weidmüller took over the majority of the shares in GTI-control mbH and GTI-process AG, which will now continue to operate and operate under the name Weidmüller GTI Software GmbH. In Marktheidenfeld software-based visualization solutions are designed for mechanical and plant engineering and distributed.

Divisions

Weidmüller works together worldwide in the three divisions Cabinet Products, Device & Field Connectivity and Automation Products & Solutions. The list is supplemented by the areas of cross-divisional functions as well as global key account management and OEM sales & engineering.

Cabinet Products

The Cabinet Products division is the largest of the three divisions at Weidmüller. Most of the control cabinet components are bundled in it, from terminal blocks to relays to surge devices. In addition to the products for switch cabinet construction, assembly services such as fitting mounting rails and housings are carried out.

Device and Field Connectivity

The employees of the Device and Field Connectivity division mainly deal with the seamless electromechanical connection from the sensor to the controller to the actuator. The infrastructure includes different interfaces and connection technologies for energy, signals and data

Automation Products and Solutions

The Automation Products and Solutions division deals with solutions for Industry 4.0 that combine digitization and automation technologies. The special expertise of this division lies in condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. From 2020 the employees of the Automation Products and Solutions division will be working on the Zukunftsmeile in Paderborn.

Cooperations

It's OWL

Weidmüller is involved in the leading-edge cluster it's OWL - Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe. Weidmüller is the consortium leader in the lead project “Industrial Automation Platform for Big Data”. The aim of the project is to research how large amounts of data can be recorded and used. Together with the companies Lenze , KEB , Benteler and Herbert Kannegiesser as well as four research institutions, modules are to be developed that can independently collect, process, transport and save data. They are intended to serve as the basis for services such as predictive maintenance of machines.

Center Industrial IT

Weidmüller has had a cooperation with the Science-to-Business-Center “ Centrum Industrial IT ” (CIIT) on the innovation campus in Lemgo since the 2000s . In 2018, Weidmüller strengthened its cooperation with a Smart Connectivity Competence Center, in which innovations in the field of connection technology are to be developed and the topics of industrial infrastructure are increasingly dealt with. Ten employees from the Device and Field Connectivity division work there as part of the CIIT partner network.

Smart Factory KL

The company is a member of the Smart Factory KL technology initiative . Together with other companies as well as with the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) new concepts, standards and solutions that form the basis for highly flexible automation technology .

Robotation Academy Foshan

As a founding partner, Weidmüller is also involved in the Robotation Academy Foshan (RAF) in China. It is an amalgamation of global market leaders and local players with a focus on "Smart Production". Together with 21 partner companies, Weidmüller offers courses for the robotics industry in the high-tech region of Guangdong .

Awards

In 2018 the company received the German Innovation Award twice in the “Excellence in Business to Business” category for its industrial analytics-Solution and in the categories "Connectivity" and "Machines & Engineering" for the campaign for the introduction of a new terminal block portfolio Klippon Connect. In addition, the company was named “Top Employer Germany Engineers 2018” by the Top Employers Institute for the tenth time in a row.

In 2013, Weidmüller also received the title of “Climate Protection Company” from the Climate Protection Company eV

Committee work

Weidmüller is part of various technical committees of the VDI / VDE and is also active in the VDMA (Association of German Mechanical and Plant Engineering). The company is also a member of the ZVEI (Central Association of the Electrical and Electronics Industry), in which Jörg Timmermann is the board spokesman and CFO.

sustainability

The company also focuses on sustainability . Weidmüller is involved in social projects, such as a social and societal education project in Tanzania that Weidmüller is carrying out together with the “Club of Good Hope”. The social and societal commitment in Germany and the world is bundled under the umbrella term “Weidmüller helps”.

In addition, Weidmüller has been a member of the German Global Compact network, an initiative of the United Nations , which stands for socially responsible corporate action, since 2011 . Since 2013, the company has been part of the Klimaschutz-Unternehmen eV, an association of companies that voluntarily commit to measurable and ambitious goals in climate protection and energy efficiency.