itelligence and HARTING agree to technology and development partnership

“We employ digitalisation to generate value-added for customers, relying on intelligent partnerships such as the one with itelligence AG,” says Philip Harting, Chairman of the Board of the family-owned and managed HARTING Technology Group. No wonder – the HARTING claim has been ‘People – Power – Partnership’ for many years now. HARTING goes digital wherever it’s possible and makes sense.

“We are pleased with our close partnership with HARTING – an acknowledged technology partner for digitalisation solutions in the Industrial IoT environment. Through our joint efforts, we are able to offer an integrated solution for classic networked Industry 4.0 and IoT scenarios,” underlines Norbert Rotter, Chairman of the Board of itelligence AG. “Our pilot project for the confectionary manufacturer Cavendish & Harvey is designed not only to provide greater transparency in production, but also improve the control of manufacturing costs.”

Heading towards networked digitalised production

The project was developed at the Center for Connected Industry at the FIR, a research and teaching institution at RWTH Aachen University. The brief from Cavendish & Harvey is for tracking containers, boxes and pallets in production automatically with sensors – a significant step towards networked, digitalised production. Things become mobile, containers “learn how to think”, automatically reporting filling level and status to the system. The whole scenario will be highly automated with SAP processes in production and extended in Warehousing with innovative solutions from HARTING (MICA^® Edge Computer), itelligence (it.x-connect) and SAP (IoT Edge Gateway, SAP Leonardo, SAP Cloud and SAP S/4HANA). Seamless networked data flow is vital to the success of the value-generating digitalisation and automation of logistics and manufacturing processes.

Going digital wherever it’s possible and makes sense

There are barriers to the progress of digitalisation. Philip Harting points to country-specific regulations in Europe, new cyber security laws in China and burgeoning protectionism and nationalism in global trade, saying: “These disruptive influences are encouraging us to work even more closely with our customers and partners.”

HARTING is making MICA^® available as the hardware platform for this joint development partnership with itelligence. This makes it a quick and easy process to complete digitalisation projects for equipment and machines. Work is conducted via the HARTING MICA.network – a community for IoT and Industry 4.0. The MICA.network is the user community around the MICA^® Open Computing Platform. MICA.network partners like itelligence develop innovative concepts and solutions here, enabling companies to co-design the digitalisation and networking of processes and things.

Transparency in Production, improved cost control

For an initial pilot project, itelligence developed a solution for tracking assets – such as containers, pallets and stacker and weight detection via HARTING MICA^®. An existing itelligence product component was ported to MICA and extended with future-proof IoT functionality. The basis is RFID technology – but further developments may draw on other transmitter-receiver systems. The new pilot solution gives Cavendish & Harvey greater transparency in Production, improves the control of manufacturing costs and inventory control in the production process.

Under the banner of “IT meets Business – The Perfect Symbiosis!”, itelligence World provides attendees with the essentials of digitalisation. This IT conference, trade fair, expert workshop and networking event all in one starts at 9 a.m. at the Conference Center at itelligence AG, Königsbreede 1, in Bielefeld on 12 September. The event organisers are expecting a lot of interest from company directors, IT decision-makers and IT managers and are therefore asking for pre-registration via website www.itelligencegroup.com/de. 

About itelligence:

itelligence is a globally leading SAP consulting company that employs some 7,500 highly qualified staff in 25 countries. itelligence is an SAP Hybris Gold Partner, SAP Business Alliance Partner, SAP Global Hosting Partner, an SAP-certified supplier of cloud services and application management services, and an SAP Platinum Partner and realizes complex projects in the SAP environment around the world. The company’s comprehensive services range from SAP strategy consulting, SAP license sales and SAP industry solutions developed in-house to application-management and hosting services – all of which contributed to total sales in 2017 of approximately EUR 872.2 million. The renowned German business magazine “brand eins” rated itelligence one of Germany’s best management consultancy firms.