40 ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • Industry News Efficient Engineering Excellence: Eaton's Energy Management Plant Taking Manufacturing to the Next Level. The transformation began in 2018, when Eaton introduced Eplan at the Hengelo site. “Our management had set ambitious goals that required innovative tools and processes to improve our electrical designs,” explains Eugén Ranft, Eaton Hengelo Plant Manager. At the time, Ranft was based in South Africa, but he helped lead the rollout from afar. Boosting productivity at Hengelo was no small feat. The site holds a unique role in Eaton’s global operations: it’s where the company develops its pioneering SF6-free medium-voltage switchgear, a key product line across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. As Ranft puts it, “From this location, we will continue to bring the next generation of Eaton’s mediumvoltage switchgear to market.” Data Consistency with Eplan With objectives and framework in place, the missing piece was the right tool. For Ranft and his team, Eplan’s data-driven engineering approach was the answer. “We saw the advantage of the datadriven approach,” he says. Previously, maintaining documents such as parts lists, terminal diagrams, and wiring lists required significant manual effort. With Eplan, updates occur automatically from a centralised data source—a critical factor in Eaton’s decision, even though it meant rethinking their engineering methodology and internal processes. Efficiency Gains in Engineering and Production After adopting Eplan, Eaton began seeing gradual gains in efficiency. “It is always important to us to break down silo-like structures if this leads to efficiency gains,” says Ranft. Eplan’s expert consulting support also played a key role. A four-person team led the implementation at Hengelo, focusing not only on internal engineering, but also collaborating with other Eaton locations to identify improvement potential. One simple but impactful Eaton, a global leader in intelligent energy management systems with more than 90,000 employees, continues to push innovation at its Hengelo site in the Netherlands. There, the company produces high-quality low-voltage and mediumvoltage switchgear systems, leveraging Eplan software and Rittal machinery to drive performance and consistency. Eugén Ranft, Plant Manager at Eaton in Hengelo
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