Last year, Rittal, Eplan, Cideon and German Edge Cloud (GEC) held their first joint press conference at the Hannover Fair with the presentation of the ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS). This year, the companies announce that they will show visitors that and how Smart Production works. With a cloud view into their own practice. In Hannover, as in Rittal’s plants, the focus will be on digital transformation, energy supply and efficiency, and sustainability.
What is implemented at customers’ machine and plant engineering facilities is also used by Rittal and its sister companies in their own factories. That is why the Hannover Messe 2023 is to be used for the public proof of concept for Smart Production. In the meantime, ONCITE DPS is not only productive in the Haiger plant. The solution implemented with German Edge Cloud has now also been used by Rittal’s own software developers as the basis for new developments that go one step further.
Smart Production with energy monitoring live in Haiger – Digital twins in action
Photo from Hannover Fair 2022 (photo Rittal GmbH & Co. KG)
Visitors can see what this means in practice live and in quasi real time at the joint stand of the companies in Hanover. In Rittal’s smart control cabinet factory in Haiger, energy monitoring has already been integrated into the ONCITE DPS digital production system – via the cloud, a live insight is provided from the trade fair into the real energy data of the ongoing production. The energy flows of the associated data center can also be seen. The RiZone OTM Suite, which is to be introduced at the trade fair, is running there to manage the data center operating technology. Rittal uses here what its sister company German Edge Cloud develops and offers to customers: RiZone OTM Suite relies on Composable Software with the flexible microservices architecture of ONCITE DPS.
Digital twins of plants, products and manufacturing are essential on the way to the smart factory. They also play a crucial role in the presentations at Hannover Fair, enabling visitors to see and understand what is happening in industrial processes. And they are an important lever for improving them.
Markus Asch (photo Sendler), CEO Rittal International and Rittal Software Systems, sees it this way: “Innovation is needed beyond products and solutions. We need to understand the processes along our customers’ value chains, think in new ecosystems and develop overarching solutions. Our conviction is that this is only possible via standardized platforms. Hannover Fair is the forum for industry-wide dialog about this.”