The Reality: Still Analog In the course of digitization, the requirements on control cabinet manufacturing are changing: Complex installation cycles must be simplified and time investments reduced. That guarantees competitiveness in a hotly contested global market. The central concept of Industry 4.0 promises transformation-capable value creation systems that allow economical production of customized products, even for lot size one. However, the reality in German companies is still largely analog. Even today, essential work steps are performed, not automatically, but by hand – paper reigns supreme in the planning and production of control cabinets. A study by the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW) at the University of Stuttgart examined the control cabinet manufacturing of the future. Some 92 percent of the study participants admitted to relying on 2D engineering. The study is from 2017.* Are Germany’s control cabinet manufacturers missing out on the digital transformation – a transformation in which continuous information chains and intelligent, autonomous machines are already offering many options for making processes more efficient and economical?