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Guidance and innovation from Schmersal

Schmersal – a group Profile

The Schmersal Group is a world leader in electrical and electronic safety switchgear and systems for the protection of man and machine. The group is represented worldwide, with manufacturing plants in Germany, Brazil and China and affiliated offices in the UK, US, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland and Norway.

Over recent years, the Schmersal Group has extended its product offering through a number of acquisitions. The latest manufacturing companies to join the group have retained their responsibility for core competences and product groups to ensure that the company units maintain their specialisation.

The group offers a complete range of safety control devices, which are developed and manufactured in these centres of competence.

K.A. Schmersal

Immediately after the Second World War, two brothers, Kurt Andreas and Ernst Schmersal, founded a company which initially built components used in the production of lifts and soon diversified in to the production of mechanically-operated electrical control devices.

During the 1950’s, the company’s portfolio continually widened with many of the control devices being used in safety-relevant applications.

Today, K.A. Schmersal’s head office in Wuppertal, Germany, employs about 500 administration, design & development and production staff and is the groups main centre of competence for electro-mechanical safety and position switches; magnetic switches; inductive, capacitive and optical proximity switches; customer-specific control systems and elevator technology.

Elan

Established in Düsseldorf in the early 1950’s, Elan Schaltgeräte GmbH & Co. KG was acquired from the Schunk Group in 1997 and currently employs 180 people at its new site in Wettenberg. Elan is Schmersal’s centre of competence for command and signalling devices, safety relays and safety monitoring modules as well as proprietary bus systems for the safety area.

With all these companies working together, it’s no wonder that Schmersal Group’s range covers about 18,000 different products, suggesting that creative engineers must be active in design and development.

In addition, the necessary organisational structures have been put in place not only to encourage innovation but also to get products ready for the market quickly to ensure that Schmersal's customers can profit from new ideas as early as possible.