Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly revolutionizing various industries and the business world. AI offers enormous potential, especially for Germany's medium-sized business structure. Rutronik recently announced its investment in collective mind, an AI specialist with a focus on automated image processing, so-called "machine vision". This and other current developments in AI at small and medium-sized companies in Pforzheim and the Northern Black Forest were the focus of the AI Network event.
Strategic partnership for AI innovations
Fabian Plentz, Chief Operation Officer (COO) of Rutronik, and Armin Bär, Managing Director of collective mind, provided insights into the young partnership between Rutronik and collective mind with initial project successes in a joint presentation at the AI Network event.
The program with two further presentations by Rutronik on AI in the IT organization and in its own research projects and those in cooperation with universities and research institutes was rounded off by an introductory presentation by Tobias Wahner, Managing Director of Just 4 People. The event program concluded with a presentation on the legal aspects by attorney Tim Kröger from Ladenburger Rechtsanwälte in Pforzheim.
AI at Rutronik – from the use of AI in the organization to in-house developments
The AI Network event was the first external presentation by the two partners on the background and planned projects of Rutronik in cooperation with collective mind. "The trend is towards complete solutions with powerful, compact hardware for compute-intensive AI applications," says Fabian Plentz, COO of Rutronik, explaining the strengths of both companies. "The integration of hardware and software is often a major challenge, as it cannot be offered from a single source. Through our investment in collective mind, we can now offer this on the market for the first time," he continues.
As part of an initial project in the field of warehouse logistics, collective mind is currently testing AI-based camera technology for the automatic recognition and recording of labels at the logistics center In Eisingen. Rutronik, with its more than 100,000 electronic components and the associated variable capture data, is ideally suited as a case study for testing this development. The goal of the two companies is that in the future, the AI application in logistics will be able to recognize the information correctly and fully automatically, even if the format and arrangement of the product data on the corresponding product labels changes, and without having to adapt the software. "We have ambitious goals, but our first joint project successes speak for very promising AI-based logistics solutions," says, Armin Bär, Managing Director of collective mind, with a focus on distribution.
The AI networking event concluded with an open discussion round and a get-together, where the evening ended with in-depth discussions.
