20 May 2021

2 minutes

HARTING har-modular® takes the German Innovation Award 2021

The HARTING har-modular® PCB system has garnered the German Innovation Award 2021 in the Gold category - the highest distinction the jury bestows in connection with this award. This is the third year in a row that HARTING has won the coveted accolade.

After the German Innovation Award 2019 went to the HARTING ix Industrial interface for miniaturized Ethernet solutions and 2020 to the Single Pair Ethernet interface HARTING T1 Industrial, the 2021 award is acknowledging the modular har-modular^® PCB system. The solution - which is customer configurable - represents a novelty in device construction and facilitates the planning and implementation of prototypes and series devices for developers.

German Innovation Award winner - har-modular

As the market leader in board-to-board connectivity, HARTING has chosen an entirely new approach and designed an absolutely novel solution – an approach which firmly convinced the jury. "To date, manufacturing batch size 1 in industrial quality still represents a major challenge. This problem now seems to be a thing of the past with
har-modular^®", according to the jury's statement.

Ralf Klein, Managing Director of HARTING Electronics, is particularly pleased with this third award. "The challenges of Industry 4.0 can only be mastered with innovation and new solution approaches. har-modular^®is precisely such an innovation, where we, as the market leader in the field of industrial board connectivity, have also taken a step back, thoroughly grasped the problems developers are faced with, and designed an entirely new modular solution approach. I am proud of the team around the har-modular^® and would like to thank all the creative minds at HARTING."

This year, the German Design Council bestowed the highest category GOLD on the har-modular^® interface - a user-configurable modular solution for PCB connectors. Depending on the requirements and intended use in the device, developers can compile the required contacts online in terms of design, number and arrangement and order them from batch size 1. The interface represents an absolutely ground-breaking innovation in this field, saving valuable time for designers while optimizing the development of industrial devices. With over one trillion possible combinations, the system offers unlimited freedom for modern device developments.

The jury

The German Innovation Award's top-class and interdisciplinary jury of experts comprises a multifaceted range of expertise, including product design, marketing, computer science, technology history, physics, patent consulting and financial services. "Drawing on this range of expertise, we guarantee an individual, neutral and expert assessment," as Lutz Dietzold, Managing Director of the German Design Council, emphasized. "User-centricity represents a major criterion in the evaluation. It is the distinguishing hallmark of the German Innovation Award," Dietzold went on to comment. "Many companies already involve future users in product and design development at an early stage. Here, they are relying on expedient methods such as 'design thinking' or 'lean start-up' in order to identify genuine customer needs and develop commercially relevant products based on these requirements."

A total of 680 submissions from German and international companies from a wide range of industries were accepted for the German Innovation Award 2021 - not only including many well-known brands but also hidden champions and start-ups.