HARTING wins AI award

The HARTING Technology Group has won the Industrial AI Award ‘FREDDIE’. The Technology Group's ‘Connectivity AI’ impressed the expert jury in the ‘Game Changer’ category. The application combines an adaptive language model with generative design and conceptual expertise. At the touch of a button, it generates complete product ideas for new connection solutions – including sketches, CAD models and simulations. The Industrial AI Award was initiated by publish-industry and UnternehmerTUM and presented in Munich on 16 October.

With ‘Connectivity AI’, the HARTING Technology Group has developed an application that allows product developers and designers to interact intuitively with artificial intelligence (AI) and exchange requirements and proposed solutions.

Engineers can enter, document and even reuse their technical requirements in natural language. The AI analyses and trains these requirements and develops suitable product sketches, 3D models and simulations in real time that meet these requirements.

Natural interaction meets generative design

‘The idea arose from the challenge of meeting individual customer requirements quickly and reliably,’ explains Simon Hagen, Head of Innovation Hub at the HARTING Technology Group. ‘Manual design processes go through numerous iterations and test loops. The process is error-prone and therefore time-consuming.’ With the ever-increasing demand for customer-specific connection solutions, there was also a growing shortage of skilled workers with this domain knowledge. ‘Connectivity AI solves these problems and combines natural interaction with generative design,’ Hagen summarises.

The HARTING Technology Group developed ‘Connectivity AI’ as part of an internal innovation programme. External partners and universities provided support with their expertise. From the idea to implementation, the developers followed familiar steps. They derived requirements from existing challenges, developed a prototype, integrated additional functions and tools, and reviewed the results.

The highlight: once completed, the AI can now take over routine design tasks in the development process. This not only saves engineers time, but also allows them to concentrate fully on strategic problem solving. The result is a valid prototype that can be created much more quickly.

Clear AI vision

The platform is constantly being developed and optimised: higher speed, additional simulation tools, new parts and components. In the long term, the HARTING Technology Group is pursuing a clear vision: engineers contribute their solution expertise, while ‘Connectivity AI’ takes care of implementation from sketch to simulation. The aim is for the application to offer added value not only to individual teams, but to the entire company and, of course, its customers.