This plant is anything but ordinary: Rittal’s factory in Haiger, Hesse, has received a top award. It is the “Factory of the Year 2025” – one of the industry’s highest awards, for more than 30 years it has s only been given only to the best factories in the world. The company achieved the top ranking among all the production companies taking part with its overall victory in the benchmark competition. The jury was particularly impressed by the high level of digitalisation and automation throughout the entire works, as well as the full focus on the customer during every process.
Rittal’s Haiger plant is a pioneering location: In the world market leader’s state-of-the-art factory, up to 9,000 compact enclosures are manufactured rapidly and efficiently every day. After all, the plant is fully digitally integrated. Production is carried out here in an unparalleled way, according to the jury from the management consultancy Kearney and the “Produktion” trade magazine, which has been honouring the world’s best production locations for more than 30 years. They voted the plant “Factory of the Year 2025”.
Here, Industry 4.0 is not merely a buzzword, but reality: production processes are mapped as digital twins, AI tools ensure quality and speed, QR codes continuously ensure transparency and component traceability. A near-perfect planning accuracy of 99.9 per cent and delivery times of 24 hours in Europe and 48 hours worldwide demonstrate the plant’s performance impressively.
End-to-end digitalisation from order to dispatch
The jury was particularly impressed by the continuous end-to-end process chain. What does that mean? All the steps are mapped digitally – from product configuration and automated factory work processes through to packaging. This allows Rittal to produce series and customised products flexibly and at any time. The plant even remained fully operational during the COVID pandemic.
“Our factory shows what is possible when digitalisation is consistently thought through and implemented,” says Jürgen Kromer, plant director at Rittal in Haiger for more than four years and who is fascinated every day by “his” production: “Digitalisation naturally gives us efficiency. Above all, though, we find it important that it offers our customers major benefits – transparency, quality and availability.”
A pioneering spirit and in-house solutions
When the plant was built a few years ago, the pioneering spirit really blossomed, says Mr. Kromer, describing an intense period: “We built many of the systems used in the Haiger plant ourselves. We didn’t wait for someone to supply the technologies we needed for a digitalised factory. We made use of our own expertise and that of our employees, which makes us proud.”
AI testing methods in use
In order to stay ahead of the curve, the team is also promoting AI optimisations in close collaboration with the Rittal Digital Operations department, headed by Moritz Heide: “Artificial intelligence is already successfully aiding quality control, maintenance, our knowledge management, and software analysis.” Through the use of AI, Rittal, for example, has achieved a remarkable 91 per cent first-time pass rate. The jury was also impressed that time-consuming rework was now largely a thing of the past.
“Because our data is available in high quality across the entire value chain, we can use AI in a focused way,” Mr. Heide says: “In engineering, for instance, we are helping our customers become much faster with AI-supported software solutions from our sister company Eplan. At the factory, we minimise errors and complaints using AI tools. The highest data quality and availability throughout the entire process is the standard our customers can expect.”
Commitment to the location
“Through its victory in the main category, Rittal has won the highest award that a production company in Europe can receive,” says Professor Friedhelm Loh, owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group, of which Rittal is the largest member: “We are very grateful for the jury’s decision to award us this prize. I would also like to thank the Rittal team for making this possible. The plant represents a commitment to Germany and Europe as a production location. It safeguards jobs for employees and their families in our region. And that makes us very proud.”