Interview with Boming Zhu, Linquan Technology
“Modular tooling increases machine adaptability”
Before joining Linquan Technology in 2025, Boming Zhu served as Managing Director at WireElite, an automation services company specialising in wire processing equipment.
Boming Zhu
Wire harness makers face growing pressure to automate production as vehicle architectures become more complex. Boming Zhu of Linquan Technology explains where design and manufacturing must evolve to close the gap.
Wire harness manufacturing is coming under growing pressure as rising labour costs, limited workforce availability and increasingly complex vehicle architectures challenge traditional production models. Boming Zhu, General Manager Overseas Business at Linquan Technology, brings more than ten years of experience in industrial automation spanning design, project management, applications and sales.
Ahead of the Automotive Wire Harness & EDS Conference Detroit 2026, we spoke with Zhu about the challenges involved in taking wire harness automation to the next level. At the conference, he will address this topic in his presentation, Bridging Design and Automation: The Next Evolution of Wire Harness Manufacturing. In the interview, Zhu explains why greater automation requires changes to the harness itself, more flexible manufacturing systems and a better flow of engineering data into production.
ADT: Looking ahead five years, what will be the single biggest challenge for the wire harness and EDS industry in North America, and why?
Labour cost and availability, combined with the increasing complexity of EV and software-defined vehicle architectures, will continue to push the industry towards higher levels of production automation. However, wire harness design for automation has not yet fully caught up with these expectations, and the concept of the smart wire harness factory has not yet been widely realised across the industry. There is still a significant gap between where the industry needs to be and where it is today.
Where do you see the biggest gap between what next-generation E/E architectures require and what today’s development and manufacturing ecosystem can actually deliver at scale?
Next-generation zonal and centralised E/E architectures are driving the need for more flexible, reconfigurable harness designs and faster changeovers. However, today’s development and manufacturing ecosystem is still largely based on legacy architectures and high-volume, low-mix production models. These models continue to be highly competitive in today’s price-sensitive market, creating a significant challenge in transitioning to more flexible and automation-oriented manufacturing systems.
Which part of wire harness manufacturing remains fundamentally hardest to automate reliably today: handling flexible wires, branching, routing, connector insertion, clipping, taping or final inspection, and why?
Handling flexible wires, branching and routing remain among the hardest processes to automate reliably. Wire is a flexible object rather than a rigid component, and routing is fundamentally a topology problem rather than simply an XYZ motion problem. Human operators can continuously sense and correct errors, while also sorting, separating, straightening and untangling wires as they work. Current robotic and vision systems still struggle to consistently match this level of flexibility and adaptability.
Which changes to the wire harness itself would unlock more automation than simply investing in more sophisticated production equipment?
Design-for-automation principles would have a greater impact than simply investing in more sophisticated equipment. These could include standardised connector families, reduced variant complexity, consistent branch and routing geometries, and harness designs that are more tolerant of robotic handling and positioning variations.
What information needs to flow directly from engineering into machines and MES systems to enable closed-loop manufacturing, and where does data quality most often break that chain?
The information flowing from engineering should go beyond geometric data such as wire lists and routing information. It should also include the broader manufacturing intent, so that engineering data can be directly integrated with the automation process, machine capabilities and manufacturing data collection requirements. Data quality often breaks down when engineering information needs to be translated into machine-specific processes and parameters. Machine calibration is also critical to maintaining data accuracy and process consistency, particularly for preventive maintenance and when introducing new variants or products into the production system.
How can automation remain economically viable in high-mix production with frequent engineering changes, and which role do modular tooling, rapid changeovers, machine vision and process monitoring play?
The key is to develop a flexible manufacturing system that is modular, scalable and capable of adapting to both product and process changes. Modular tooling increases machine adaptability when introducing new products, while quick changeovers reduce downtime between variants. Machine vision allows the system to compensate for physical variations, while process monitoring can actively detect deviations before they become quality issues. Together, these capabilities can make automation more economically viable in high-mix production environments.
Finally, what do you personally hope to take away from the Automotive Wire Harness & EDS Conference Detroit 2026?
I want to better understand where the industry believes the next major bottlenecks will be, particularly from the OEM and Tier 1 perspectives. Ultimately, I hope to leave the conference with a clearer understanding of how machine builders can help bridge the gap between harness design and automated manufacturing.
