The ZVEI has chosen the winners of the Electrifying Ideas Award 2025. With this award, the German electrical and digital industry honors ideas that can help us move towards a climate-neutral future.

The Jumo Group officially opened the new Plant 2 ('Sensilo') in Rodges near Fulda on May 22, 2025. At around 48 million euros, the new building is the largest investment in the company's history. In addition, around 21 million euros will be invested in machinery and equipment by 2027.

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The Pilz Group had to take the generally difficult economic situation into account in the past financial year. In 2024, the automation company achieved a turnover of 341 million euros. This corresponds to a decrease of 21 percent compared to the previous year.

As the proportion of renewable energies increases, the pressure on the European electricity system is growing. For the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE), this is the right time to bring technical clarity to a heated debate.

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The digital infrastructure is on the brink of change: central data centers are reaching their limits - powerful systems directly at the edge of the network are in demand. Edge data centers are becoming a decisive factor in complementing central infrastructures in a meaningful way. nLighten identifies five key drivers for this development.

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Dell Technologies presents innovations for disaggregated data centers. They cover the areas of storage, cyber resilience, software and integrated partner systems. These infrastructures combine computing, storage and network resources in pools and combine them with software-supported automation, security functions and integrated partner systems.

A vulnerability with a particularly high CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) score of 9.8 affects several Fortinet products and allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary code or commands, Censys has announced. Up to 2,878 instances worldwide could potentially be affected.

Every structural and strategic change in companies also affects the corporate culture. Without taking this into account, the desired success is rarely achieved. A reorganization is therefore much more than a technical restructuring: it is a profound change that must realign thinking, action and cooperation.

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Rockwell Automation is launching an Ethernet/IP control cabinet solution. The aim of this further development is to meet the growing demand for smarter, faster and better networked production processes.

Spectra, a provider in the industrial PC and automation sector, has acquired the Munich-based company Compmall. With the integration of the industrial PC specialist, which has been established on the market since 1993, the company is expanding its portfolio in a targeted manner.

In Germany, around 20% of companies use AI solutions, an increase of eight percentage points compared to the previous year. Microsoft is driving this development forward with 'copilot agents'. Initially assistive technologies are evolving into autonomous systems that can make decisions and control processes independently.

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Production is running at full speed, the team is working to the limit, deadlines are looming - and suddenly the plant comes to a standstill. Unforeseen situations like this put everyone involved under pressure.

The eurozone economy has started the year with lower growth than expected. While Spain and Ireland shone with strong growth, Germany and France fell short of expectations. In contrast, the increase in industrial production in March was surprisingly strong.

Softing Industrial Automation has acquired 100% of the shares in Delta Logic Automatisierungstechnik in Schwäbisch Gmünd.

New board member of the SmartFactory KL (SmartFactory Kaiserslautern) technology initiative Marco Wanner from the Augsburg-based software company Xitaso. The new board was elected as scheduled.

The industrial 5-port Gigabit DIN rail switch 'TI-G51SC' with multi-mode SC port from Trendnet is suitable for long ranges of up to 550 m.

Murrelektronik expands the 'MVK Fusion' family with the 'MVK Fusion CIP Safety'.

Belden introduces the Hirschmann standard switch 'Greyhound2000' to the market. The 19-inch Ethernet switch offers a very high fiber optic port density and configurable port modules that can be flexibly adapted to different connection scenarios.

Lenze and Rittal have entered into a technology partnership to jointly lead power distribution and drive technology into the future. RiLineX forms the basis as the new standard platform for busbar systems and inverters from Lenze.

NTT DATA study reveals transformative potential and challenges of GenAI for the manufacturing industry

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