A Siemens Xcelerator story with HARTING | Creating Connectors for the future

By Jamie Tyler

It’s always important to shine the spotlight on truly innovative global companies, and how they design and manufacture products for the future. Innovation is happening across all industries, but in this blog, we’re paying close attention to the connectors industry; introducing HARTING.

HARTING is a global leader in the connectors industry, with more than 80 years of expertise developing and manfuacturing industrial connectivity solutions. As a family-owned company headquartered in Germany, HARTING has established itself as a key player in creating mission-critical connectivity solutions across multiple industries, including industrial automation, transportation and energy.

HARTING’s implementation of Siemens Xcelerator solutions has revolutionized their end-to-end product development and manufacturing processes. With Designcenter NX™ software advanced design and simulation capabilities, they have significantly reduced developments and prototype iterations through the ability to validate design virtually. The result? A reduction of up-to 40% in physical prototyping costs.

Let’s dive into some of the exciting projects HARTING have been involved in in recent times.

The all electric society

Our story with HARTING begins with the importance of the All Electric Society. We’re currently seeing huge disruption to the worlds’ supply chains due to the conflict in the Middle East, placing greater emphasis on the need for a decarbonized future. We need to work towards the electrification of our infrastructure, leveraged by renewable energies and smart grids. Norbert Gemmeke, Managing Director, shares his thoughts on just how important the All Electric Society is for us all.

This world has to become much more electrical to get a carbon free world in the future. If we talk about electrical solutions, then we talk about sector coupling, which means, a couple of different sectors using the renewable energies in the most effective way, and with that you need a lot of connectivity and you need a lot of standardized connectivity.

Norbert Gemmeke , Managing Director, HARTING

Connectors for off high-way machinery

It’s also important to shine the spotlight on the Agricultural Industry Electronics Foundation. AEF define the standards for major agricultural equipment manufacturers, with HARTING implementing the AEF high-voltage connector standard shown in the image below.

Using Designcenter NX, HARTING create the initial connector geometry and assign materials to meet internal weight targets. HARTING then validate the performance using Simcenter™ 3D software simulations and verify dimensional robustness through tolerance stack-up and variation analysis to ensure compliance with GD&T and manufacturing tolerances.

Once product engineers are happy with the product, the data is then managed in Teamcenter® software, enabling the team to have a complete overview of products. Given the depth in functionality with Teamcenter, characteristics of each part can be closely analyzed, whilst any changes made can also be managed.

Train powerline connectors

HARTING are deeply embedded in the world of connectors through their differentiated product lines. A key area of focus for the company is creating connectors for freight trains, ensuring they can withstand a variety of harsh conditions. Being able to use a range of simulation tools is key; the HARTING team need to simulate hot and cold temperatures in order to understand how this will affect the behavior of the connectors. Wilhelm Kliever, group leader of product development for high current/ high voltage connectors, discusses his role in the project.

The train power line is a really lightweight connector for its industry. We were able to save a lot of space and weight compared to the old connector.

Generative AI using Immersive Engineering

HARTING are casting an eye to the future, looking at game changing technologies to stay ahead of the competition. The goal is to give engineers more tools to automate the ‘mundane’, freeing up time for engineers to focus on key decision making tasks.

Working with collaboration partners, HARTING are using AI to extract key language and cut down on engineering time to produce a new Connector. This new product is then fed into Designcenter NX, ready for review within Immersive Engineering. The huge differentiator for HARTING is the ability to collaborate with colleagues globally through sharing assemblies and making key design decisions virtually.

Digital transoformation at HARTING means giving our engineers more tools to automate the mundane, so basically automate the boring stuff so they can focus on the interesting problems here.

Florian Hofmann, Innovation engineer, HARTING