Please explain the thought behind your Company's motto ‘efficient engineering' and how does this translate into making manufacturing companies more competitive?
The Company motto emphasises the competence of optimised, efficient processes, which help customers to be competitive in the long term. We advise companies about process optimisation, develop software-based engineering solutions for mechatronics and implement made-to-measure CAD, PDM, PLM and ERP interfaces in order to accelerate our customers' product creation processes. This allows our customers to work more efficiently and reduce their time-to-market.
The scope of our work includes a comprehensive range of services, including corporate consultancy to variant management and configuration, process consultancy to standardisation, automation and integration, implementation, training and support services. Our software products and services are of the highest quality and are continuously being enhanced and further developed. This enables us to safeguard the technological advantage and investments of our customers in the long term.
Interoperability and data synchronisation are extremely critical aspects in today's competitive manufacturing environment. Recently, EPLAN, in close collaboration with Cideon Software GmbH, made possible the fully automatic data synchronisation between the EPLAN Platform and SAP PLM and SAP ERP. Tell us more about this and its implications for the manufacturing world.
The objective is to also become the leading solution provider in electrical and mechanical engineering - together with Eplan and CIDEON, drawing on Rittal's international position as world market leader for enclosure systems.
Tools for computer-aided planning and design (CAD) have become ubiquitous in industrial development and design departments. The expertise of EPLAN, Kuttig and CIDEON will now significantly streamline the process of product designing as it combines electronic CAD (E-CAD) and mechanical CAD (M-CAD). Another aspect to be taken into account is to ensure connectability to superordinate software systems. Both Cideon's and EPLAN's systems boast a number of technical interfaces to link up with SAP and market-leading Product Lifecycle Management Systems (PLMs).
EPLAN has recently come up with combination of EEC One & Propanel module. How is this contributing to the growth and evolution of manufacturing?
EEC One enables the automatic generation of electrical or fluid power schematics based on standardised macros and components. EPLAN is now expanding this technology to also include control cabinet engineering: mounting panel layouts will soon also be automatically generated. Standardisation and automation produce significant gains in efficiency.
At the same time, the degree of re-utilisation increases substantially. At the Hannover Messe, users got a first glimpse of the software, which will be available beginning in autumn 2014 with the new EPLAN Platform 2.4. EPLAN Pro Panel, the 3D solution for virtual control cabinet and switchgear construction, is an elementary component of the EPLAN Platform.
In the shared component database, data is available for EPLAN Pro Panel and is thus also accessible in EEC One. For instance, the 3D macros required, as well as the preassembled standard layouts for mounting plates, will from version 2.4 also be utilised in EEC One. Mounting plate configuration is specified via variables or values. Subsequently, the components are assigned to the appropriate mounting rails and precisely positioned using placement options with predefined spacing.
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