News about WERMA

Vocal element is „Product of the year 2007”

The latest innovation from the house of WERMA – the vocal element – has been declared „Product of the year 2007“. The certificate states: readers of the magazine KEM (Konradin publishers) voted “the talking signal tower the number 1 product in the automation section“. The speech output element was selected from a total field of ten products.

WERMA’s Managing Director Günter Kirn was presented with the certificate by Dr. Rolf Langbein, editor of the magazine KEM, at a ceremony in Rietheim-Weilheim.
This award confirms WERMA’s position as innovation leader for signal technology, declared Kirn proudly. He was delighted that customers also saw the company in this light.

When signal towers learnt to speak
Full of concentration, Mehmet Macit observes how the milling cutter removes layers of swarf from the steel block. Suddenly the red lamp on the machine lights up and a voice in Turkish instructs Mehmet to change the milling tool. This he duly does and in a short space of time the swarf begins to fly again.

A vision of the future? Not in the least. The new speech output element from WERMA Signaltechnik talks to machine operators and allows the customer to signal anything he desires by means of melodies and tones. With quick and direct information it prompts immediate action. Spoken instructions , especially for overseas workers in their mother tongue, help avoid misunderstandings and shorten reaction times.

How did this product come about? An impulse was provided by a client manufacturing automated baking equipment. As Ralf Gagstatter, head of product management at WERMA related: „The machine was designed to inform the baker which of the very different pieces of dough have already finished baking.“
Dirk Rothhaas, electronics developer at WERMA adds: „As we had already thought about deploying an MP3 player, we were able to apply in to this task, recording the announcements for the various baked goods.”
According to Gagstatter, the speech output element is predominately employed on production machines and assembly lines. This is the classical field of application for WERMA signal devices.

WERMA products have received awards for outstanding design on a number of occasions in the past. 11% of total costs at WERMA are expended on research and development for new products.
Each year, readers of the magazine KEM (trade magazine for design engineers) select their product of the year from a field of 10 products.