Green hydrogen is one of the most important energy carriers for a future without fossil fuels. It is produced in electrolyzers using renewable energy and enables the decarbonization of energy-intensive sectors such as the chemical or steel industry. Sunfire is one of the global pioneers in this field. The company from Dresden, Germany, develops and manufactures pressurized alkaline electrolyzers and SOEC electrolyzers, forming a unique product portfolio. In March, Sunfire celebrated the launch of series production. As part of this journey, the company relies on CONTACT Software’s Elements platform.
Electrolyzers are the bottleneck when it comes to bringing the hydrogen economy up to speed. As the demand for hydrogen in industry and other applications grows, so does the need for electrolyzer capacities. Considering this, Sunfire aims to scale its innovative technologies as quickly as possible. To lay the foundation, the company has set out to optimize processes in product development. “In CONTACT Elements we have found an open and flexible system to facilitate this,” says Wolfgang Staroske, Director Project Engineering & After Sales at Sunfire. “The platform solves our requirements largely with standard tools.”
CIM Database PLM serves as the leading system that integrates various data sources at Sunfire. The existing IT landscape is seamlessly connected through interfaces to the CAD system SolidWorks and the ERP system MS Navision. Data from suppliers and partners is integrated via CONTACT’s Collaboration Portal. This results in a centralized end-to-end data management, which simplifies data retrieval and prevents errors from working with outdated documents.
In the future, users at Sunfire will have access to a wide range of application modules from the Elements portfolio. For instance, they can synchronize engineering BOMs and manufacturing BOMs using the xBOM Manager. Project Office provides them with comprehensive project management functions for transparent scheduling and resource planning. With these and more tools at hand, Sunfire’s development teams make the most of their resources and accelerate the ramp-up of their technology.
