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5 questions with CiA's recently re-elected CiA managing director

March 14, 2019

Holger Zeltwanger, who was recently re-elected along with technical director Uwe Koppe and business director Christian Schlegel, answers our inquiries on what the future holds for the organization.

During the organization's annual CAN in Automation General Assembly, the members re-elected the three members of the board yet again. Technical director Uwe Koppe, business director Christian Schlegel and managing director Holger Zeltwanger were all re-elected.

Besides the board-of-directors, the organization elected the members of the CiA Technical Committee and of the CiA Business Committee. Bosch, Emsa, Emtas, ESD Electronics and HMS Networks are the elected members of the CiA Technical Committee. Additionally, the TC comprises representatives of the Interest Groups CANopen, CANopen FD, CAN layer-1/2, CiA profiles, security and safety as well as commercial vehicles.

In the annual meeting also those companies having not paid their membership fee for 2018 were excluded. The proposed budget for 2019 was accepted. This year, CiA will exhibit at Bauma, Interlift, and SPS, which are all located in Germany, as well as at Itap in Singapore.

From left to right: Christian Schlegel (HMS), Holger Zeltwanger, and Uwe Koppe (Microcontrol)

Holger Zeltwanger answered 5 questions about the CiA and what its future holds.

What are three key things that a machine builder, system integrator or manufacturer should know about your organization?

CiA is an independent organization not controlled by one leading member.
CiA has developed more than 20000 pages of device and application profile specification.
CiA provides consultancy services for OEMs and system designers.

What new technologies are driving product development and why?

CAN FD, the new CAN data link layer supporting bit-rates higher than 1 Mbit/s and payloads up to 64 byte, is the base for CANopen FD filling the gap between Classical CAN and Industrial Ethernet.

How does the Industrial Internet of Things figure in your growth strategy?

IIoT solutions regarding CANopen are standardized in CiA 309-5. They allow to bring each CANopen sensors and actuator into the cloud for big data processing.

How is the development of software solutions impacting your requirements for hardware?

Sophisticated software development environments and tools request increasingly more computing power and memory capacity. On the other hand, enhanced configuration tools avoids programming effort.

Looking into the future, how will technology change your organization over the next five years?

CAN XL, the next generation CAN technology with bit-rates above 10 Mbit/s and payloads up to 2048 byte will address new applications. The still increasing demand on standardization of profiles for different industries will enable real interoperability of products.