Simulation-based product configuration: How WAGO is transforming its e-shop

Connect, measure, control, and mesh – WAGO’s more than 25,000 catalog products ensure reliable and intelligent power and data flow worldwide across a wide range of applications and industries.

They are developed using simulation-based Ansys software. WAGO computational engineers use precise product models – including pluggable connectors, terminals and control systems – to develop, analyze and optimize their properties and operating principles and ensure their reliability.

What are the advantages of virtual prototypes in product development? 

They are literally “digital twins” of real products – with additional advantages: They are able to illustrate the smallest details and hidden interactions, enable rapid variant studies and “what-if” scenarios. This provides a deeper understanding of the behavior of components and systems. Unlike physical prototypes, these virtual prototypes are also location-independent and can be flexibly transferred. 

This is an important digitalization component that also benefits other areas of the company, including product management, service, and technical sales. Simulation models supplement customer communication with details that go far beyond the content of data sheets.

The challenge: These models are enormous; preparing them individually for customer projects takes time. This is often lacking at WAGO, because development work takes priority over internal “simulation-as-a-service”, which is increasingly in demand.

Efficient simulation: Focus on the essentials with reduced order models and Ansys TwinBuilder

This constellation gave rise to a new idea. The starting point is the large digital models that the calculation team at WAGO creates for all products in Ansys Mechanical. They contain all details, even those that are of secondary importance to customers. In fact, for connectors and PCB terminals, only a few electrical and thermal properties are important for the decisive customer criterion, namely electrical load capacity during subsequent use. Only these are exported to a reduced 1D model with a fraction of the previous size, which can be transferred to databases, linked to other functions, embedded in systems, and subjected to various current load profiles.

The software tool for generating reduced order models (ROMs) is called „Model Order Reduction inside Ansys“  and was developed by Ansys specialist CADFEM in cooperation with the Steinbeis Transfer Center in Lower Saxony.

Based on the reduced data, a large number of dynamic customer-specific load profiles are then simulated using the Ansys TwinBuilder software. With minimal effort, individual results are generated and made available to customers or interested parties as part of support or sales processes.

Machine learning in the WAGO E-Shop: Intelligent product selection based on thermal criteria 

WAGO has gone one step further: A machine learning model has been developed, trained, and validated using countless load cases for each product. In collaboration with other company divisions – Sales, Service, IT, Marketing – the simulation option is now part of the web shop. WAGO customers can check the basic suitability of electrical connectors and PCB terminals according to electrical and thermal criteria and taking into account their individual boundary conditions 24/7, independently and in compliance with data protection regulations. In view of ever-smaller design spaces, this allows the smallest possible component to be determined that meets the thermal specifications under the given current and ambient temperature.

This does not eliminate the need for personal consultation and customer support. However, you start with the simulation models already customized at a point in time when many fundamental questions have already been clarified, which significantly speeds up the overall process for everyone involved.

More customer service, less routine work: Scalable digitalization at WAGO 

The first products are already available in various versions, with more to follow quickly. With this simulation-based configurator, WAGO has gained a unique selling point in its markets. Like all digital solutions, this new option gives WAGO customers much more flexibility and autonomy in the procurement of standard components. At the same time, it relieves WAGO employees in development, service, and sales of time-consuming and repetitive tasks and efficiently scales existing knowledge within the company.