Harting is one of a handful of companies that has never been absent as an exhibitor in the 70-year history of the Hannover Messe, even though the product range of the company, which now has over 4300 employees, has changed dramatically during this time: In the early years, pasture fencing appliances, hotplates, energy-saving light bulbs and irons graced the trade fair stand.

This year, the IPC device class Mica, which was first presented two years ago, will be a focal point of the trade fair. The IPC received the Hermes Award at last year's trade fair. Harting sold several hundred of these in 2016. Sales in the four-digit range are planned for 2017 and thus also the transition to profitable business mode. The 'Mica Energy' is now making its debut at the trade fair. It can be used to record energy data on existing machines. Dr. Jan Regtmeier, Director Product Management IT SW Development, highlights the cooperation with IBM in particular when it comes to the related topic of energy management. "The coupling of Mica and Watson via MQTT works very well!" Regtmeier sees the charm of Mica particularly in the cooperation with specialists from other disciplines: "We are good at collecting and pre-processing sensor data and have no intention of occupying other disciplines." Regtmeier therefore also sees Mica's recipe for success in the Mica network, to which 23 companies have already committed themselves; ten more companies are in the process of joining. Eight network partners will be showcasing their solutions relating to the digitalization of production and IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) at the Harting stand at the Hannover Messe.

But what's next for Mica? The next evolutionary stage is planned with the miniMica concept. This is a scalable and flexible architecture with which computing modules can be connected to each other in various ways. Harting is testing and demonstrating the concept together with Rinspeed on its 'Oasis' concept car at the trade fair. In the case of the Oasis, the plug-in modules and the configuration of the Mica system can be tailored to the driver's preferences to suit the respective task of the vehicle.

The hope of electromobility

Another focus of the exhibition will be the topic of electromobility at Harting. The Automotive division currently has 80 employees in Germany and 350 in Romania and is primarily dedicated to charging plugs for electric vehicles. The range of plugs extends from AC charging plugs for the socket with 3.6 kW charging power to high-end DC charging plugs with 350 kW charging power. "As far as charging technology is concerned, a lot will happen in the next few years," says Marco Grinblats, Business Unit Manager E-Mobility. Especially because charging times down to 20 minutes are being targeted for vehicles with a charging capacity of just under 100 kWh. "If you want to provide ten of these charging stations, you need to have a charging capacity of 3.5 MW on site," calculates Grinblats. "There are still major infrastructure challenges to overcome!" Harting wants to focus on charging plug technology and is primarily confronted with the challenges of increasing currents, increasing power loss, higher cable cross-sections and increasing weights - not trivial issues when you consider that a 350 kW charging plug today weighs 20 kg.

Ethernet up to the sensor

Miss M8ty plug

© Harting

Sensors, camera systems and switches are just some of the components that today are often only prevented from further miniaturization by the connection technology. With the Miss M8ty connector technology, Harting is presenting a standardized M8-coded Fast Ethernet solution at the trade fair, which supplies all consumers with power and data via one interface with up to 100 Mbit and POE and is therefore suitable for replacing previous bus systems, according to Harting.