With this competition, the international management consultants A.T. Kearney and the magazine “Wirtschafts-Woche” in co-operation with the Fraunhofer Institute and the KfW banking group reward the best German innovation management every year. More than 100 companies took part.

In the opinion of the jury, “Hirschmann Automation and Control is an example for excellent small and medium company innovation management from which large companies can benefit. The organisational solutions within the company and the nature of the corporate culture were particularly impressive in the course of the competition.“

The mark of quality for innovation management

A market-oriented strategy forms the basis for the innovation management. “Teams from different departments first work out the content. This includes the description of the initial situation, the goals and, above all, the ways to achieve these goals. The results are then presented to the management annually and jointly evaluated”, Dr. Georg Schneider, Head of Marketing, Research and Development at Hirschmann Automation and Control explains.

One example of a successful innovation management is the “OpenRail“ concept with which Hirschmann takes the step from a warehouse production to an order-related production: from December of this year, customers will be able to put together Industrial Ethernet switches from about 1,000 possible combinations of by mouseclick via the Internet which will enable tailor-made solutions with an optimum price-performance ratio.