Rittal has been awarded the Top 100 seal for its innovative strength and sustainability following an independent scientific selection process. This means that the largest company in the Friedhelm Loh Group is again one of Germany’s 100 most innovative medium-sized companies for the third year in a row.
“Can companies create new products, services, processes and business opportunities? Are these achievements mere coincidences or the results of a structured and targeted approach? These are the questions we pursue at Top 100,” says innovation researcher Professor Nikolaus Franke. He and his team have already searched for and honoured the 100 best innovators in German SMEs on behalf of compamedia, which organises the competition.
Rittal has also been awarded the renowned “Top Innovator 2024” seal of approval for its sustainable innovative strength, particularly in the areas of innovative processes and organisation, and for its market position as a sustainable innovation leader. This makes Rittal, the enclosure and systems specialist from Herborn, one of Germany’s innovation champions for the fourth time.
It focuses on how panel builders, switchgear manufacturers and the machinery sector manage change pressures and challenges related to energy transition and digital transformation. Together with its sister companies Eplan, Cideon and German Edge Cloud, Rittal thinks along the lines of its clients’ processes, consistently optimising them to create sustainable added value across the value chain.
How does that fit together? By intelligently combining hardware and software. “Innovation is our contribution to the overall success of the customer. Products and solutions alone are no longer enough to remain competitive over the long term and to follow the path to the industrial future,” Markus Asch, CEO of Rittal International and Rittal Software Systems, explains. “We are very grateful that this could be seen during the course of the study and that our company has received special recognition by being included in the Top 100.”
About the Top 100
The innovation contest is based on a methodical selection process, which evaluates mid-sized companies in five categories based on more than 100 test criteria: innovation-friendly top management, innovation climate, innovative processes and organisation, external focus, open innovation and innovation success.
Since 1993, compamedia has been awarding the Top 100 seal to medium-sized companies as the only independent prize for innovation management in Germany. Since 2002, the scientific management has been in the hands of innovation researcher Professor Nikolaus Franke, founder and head of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Project partners include the Fraunhofer Society for the Promotion of Applied Research and the BVMW association of medium-sized businesses, while science correspondent Ranga Yogeshwar is the competition’s mentor. He will present prizes to the top innovators at the award ceremony on 28 June 2024 at the ninth German SME Summit in Weimar.