Customised products in just a few hours
Web configurators for on-demand production
The vision of a society that meets its entire energy requirements by sourcing green electricity and distributing it in line with demand also poses new challenges for the suppliers of the necessary "hardware".
There will certainly be a wide range of applications in both industrial and private environments that will need to be supplied with energy. And these consumers need to be provided in line with demand and connected accordingly. Certain (industrial) standards, but also individual scenarios have to be reconciled. In the case of a very large number of individual products with different characteristics, a product range can no longer be completely thought out, predefined or even pre-produced. The consumption of resources, warehousing and therefore also the financial risks are unlikely to be calculable.
Consequently, there must be a shift away from selecting from a range of products on offer and towards the demand and requirements based and timely production of products according to actual customer requirements. HARTING is already meeting these challenges today and is moving in this direction by offering web configurators. In the area of unshielded M12 cable assemblies, a web configurator offers the complete range of options for customised cable assemblies. Only pre-tested and functioning combinations of connectors and cables can be selected in order to provide users with maximum safety. At the end of the configuration process, digital documents such as drawings and 3D models are directly available for users to work with.
In future, not only will the product be created, but also its "digital twin". All internal systems up to the digitalised production line are designed to manufacture and deliver this newly defined product in a "one-piece flow" process in the shortest possible time. The unit of measurement for the production process is no longer defined in weeks or days between order and dispatch, but is minimised down to hours.
The focus is on individuality and the short-term provision of both physical and digital products. This enables optimised, demand and requirements based and therefore sustainable use of raw materials and energy right from the outset of the production process.
The fact that HARTING is equipping its components and standard products with a digital twin is nothing new. The company uses the Asset Administration Shell (AAS) to create the digital product passport and determine the product carbon footprint. Meanwhile, the digital twin has also found its way into the company's configurators: the individual components are each equipped with an administration shell. These individual administration shells ultimately result in a superordinate administration shell for the entire solution. Already in use for assembling customised Han connectors, other configurators - such as the M12 configurator – are set to follow suit in the future.
