Since 1953, the German Institute for Inventions has been awarding the Rudolf Diesel Medal to entrepreneurs and companies who have demonstrated both their inventive spirit and their ability to successfully implement ideas in business.

Dr. Heiner Pollert, first Chairman of the German Institute for Inventions and Prof. Dr. Alexander Wurzer, Spokesman of the Board of Trustees, paid tribute to Renate Pilz's entrepreneurial spirit. The laudatory speech said: "Pilz is regarded as a pioneer of modern machinery safety. The company has set industry standards with its technical innovations and thus written industrial history. Just like Rudolf Diesel, Renate Pilz had to fight against entrenched beliefs in technology and electromechanics in order to bring fundamental innovations such as electronic solutions in safe control technology to industrial acceptance for the benefit of people".

Renate Pilz was born in Göppingen in 1940. When her husband Peter Pilz died in a plane crash in 1975, she, then a housewife and mother, took over responsibility for the family business: From 1975 to 1994, she was a member of the company's advisory board and initiated the focus on safe automation technology. The aim here was to protect people, machines and the environment through safe automation in the production facilities. In 1994, she took over the operational management of her company as Managing Partner and drove Pilz's globalization as an "ambassador of safety". At the end of 2017, Renate Pilz handed over responsibility for the company to her daughter Susanne Kunschert and her son Thomas Pilz.

The Rudolf Diesel Medal is one of the few economically independent awards for entrepreneurs: the heads of German industry and technology associations and the chairs of major universities nominate suitable award winners. The jury, the Rudolf Diesel Board of Trustees of the sponsoring association Deutsches Institut für Erfindungswesen, selects the winners. The Board of Trustees is made up of around 60 technical managers and managing directors of German SMEs.