Wilo, one of the world’s leading premium providers of pumps and pump systems for the building services, water management, and industrial sectors, and Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation which was named the world’s most sustainable corporation by Corporate Knights Global 100 Index in February 2021, have entered into a strategic partnership to jointly develop sustainability and efficiency solutions for the water and buildings industries.
"Taking the risk of politically motivated decoupling of global value chains into account, cooperations and partnerships will become crucial to success in the future," explains Oliver Hermes, President and CEO of the Wilo Group. "With this strategic partnership, we pursue the aim to consciously counteract any decoupling tendencies. But we also want to fully exploit the joint innovative power to develop new digital solutions for the challenges of tomorrow."
The combination of the technologies and services from the two companies will provide complete solutions for energy efficiency and water conservation for sustainable buildings, municipalities, utilities, and industrial water applications.
This partnership is designed to enhance the working relationship between the two companies in the deployment of unique architectures and digital technologies based on integration and custom developments, including universal automation software technologies. The terms of the strengthened cooperation include the Schneider Electric software-centric automation system, EcoStruxure™ Automation Expert, as well as analytics capabilities and digital services.
The aim of the agreement is to develop a common value proposition to tackle the existing challenges for water sustainability by defining unique digital solutions for water scarcity, water recycling and infrastructure efficiency, and then deploy those solutions at scale.
Based on the customer experience developed jointly for Wilopark, Schneider Electric and Wilo will also engage in a collaboration to help industries and buildings of the future reduce their CO2 footprint by addressing operational decarbonization through innovative technologies and the integration of renewable energy sources and better energy management.
Wilo, represented by Chief Technology Officer Georg Weber, and Schneider Electric, represented by Alain Dedieu, Segment President Water Wastewater, and Philippe Rambach, Senior Vice President Industrial Automation, agreed to the joint partnership during Wilo’s international industry conference.
“Both parties agreed to strengthen our long history of collaboration and partnership by combining our leadership and domain knowledge in our respective fields with our common innovative spirit and shared ambition to shape a sustainable future for water, a critical resource for life and industry, ” said Alain Dedieu.
Georg Weber adds: “We are happy to further intensify our partnership with such an innovative and like-minded company. I am especially proud to see this collaboration realized not only in contracts but also in very hands-on technological projects.”
Joint projects include supporting and strengthening solutions for:
- Plug-and-play solutions for water treatment
- Building automation and preventive maintenance capabilities with innovative hardware and software
- Equipping Wilopark
- with an open and scalable digital platform with AVEVA™ System Platform (formerly Wonderware) that merges asset data and process data from all sub-systems (installations)
- with a fully integrated e-mobility charging system for Wilo’s electric vehicle fleet
“Wilo and Schneider Electric play a decisive role in providing solutions for sustainable automation solutions and infrastructures”, said Georg Weber. “We take this responsibility very seriously and always aim to go beyond the obvious. Schneider Electric is the ideal partner in this respect.”