Wire Harness Industry: Ready for the Next Phase?

The Bordnetzkongress 2026 showed how strongly automation, digitalisation and standardisation are reshaping the industry. Experts gathered in Ludwigsburg to discuss the future of the wiring harness.

With 370 participants from 122 companies, the event underlined its position as one of the industry’s leading meeting points. Under the direction of conference chairman Dr Rainer König, three megatrends dominated the discussions: end-to-end automation, continuous digitalisation and sustainable transformation. The key takeaways can be summarised in five questions.

1. Is automation in wiring harness production still optional?

The clear answer from Ludwigsburg was no. Panel discussions and the final report of the Next2OEM research project demonstrated that automation is no longer simply an optional efficiency topic. Dr Ingo Busche (Audi) delivered a striking explanation for why production needs to move closer to OEMs: “Automotive production in Germany will no longer be possible if we cannot pursue these kinds of automation approaches together.”

The €23.1 million Next2OEM project demonstrated that end-to-end automation levels of around 90% are technically and economically feasible. This is no longer only about reducing costs. It is increasingly about technical feasibility. Dr Ole Mende (Audi) explained that miniaturisation in zonal controllers is reaching physical limits: “The size of zonal controllers is no longer defined by their contents, but by the number of external interfaces.” He concluded that future contact systems will become too small for manual assembly, making machines the necessary enabler.

To prevent the loss of component traceability during production, Audi also presented the so-called “praline box”, an intermediate transport system that preserves the exact position of connectors for robot-supported vehicle assembly.

2. How can the growing variety of wiring harness components be managed?

One of the biggest barriers to automation is the enormous variation in components. Melanie Sohnemann (Volkswagen) revealed that Volkswagen currently manages more than 1,000 connector variants across its modular toolkit, resulting in long lead times and high costs.

Volkswagen’s solution is a modular connector system for unsealed applications based on standardised inserts capable of supporting more than 200,000 configurations. According to Sohnemann: “We are achieving savings of 30 to 50% in material costs, which is highly significant for connectors in wiring harness systems.”

The system allows developers to start immediately with a defined interface rather than waiting 86 weeks for the development of a custom connector. Through the use of lever mechanisms, ergonomic requirements in production can also be improved, while assembly times on the production line can be reduced by up to 82% by consolidating several connectors into one module.

At the same time, Audi is developing a similar concept for sealed applications to maximise synergies across the group. The ultimate objective behind this standardisation effort is the “10-hour car” — a production target intended to make manufacturing competitive again in high-wage countries such as Germany and Spain.

3. ID.Polo: What innovations does Volkswagen’s latest model introduce?

At the Bordnetzkongress 2026, the ID.Polo served as a real-world showcase for new wiring architectures. Dr Rainer Kühne (Volkswagen) and Marvin Malinowski (Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze) presented a radical simplification of the low-voltage wiring harness through a newly developed Y0 grommet.

This solution enables the wiring harness for the interior and front end to be designed as a single assembly. During installation, the front section is simply pushed forwards instead of being laboriously threaded through the bulkhead.

Automobil-Elektronik Kongress

June 16 and 17, 2026 | LUDWIGSBURG

“With this idea, we were able to reduce logistics costs by 30% simply because there are no longer two separate wiring harnesses,” Kühne explained. In addition, six coupling points were eliminated, significantly reducing both material costs and failure risks.

In the high-voltage area, a production facility in Spain increased automation levels from the usual 25% to 75%. This includes traction cables (60% automation), charging cables (80%) and auxiliary wiring harnesses, which reached automation levels of 85%.

Malinowski emphasised that this was only possible through a strict “design for automation” approach in which products and production systems were developed in parallel. Manufacturing highlights included automated splice processes with overmoulding as well as laser-marked unique data matrix codes for complete traceability.

4. Is sustainability in wiring harnesses more than greenwashing?

At the Bordnetzkongress 2026, sustainability was no longer discussed merely as a compliance issue but increasingly as an economic competitiveness factor.

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Patrícia Cavaco (Yazaki EMEA) warned: “Regulation is progressing faster than our industry can adapt.” In light of the EU Green Deal and upcoming CO₂ border adjustment mechanisms, the industry must focus more strongly on the entire value chain, especially Scope 3 emissions, since electric vehicles shift emissions upstream into production and supply chains.

Hutchinson presented practical progress through the next generation of wiring harness grommets. Through eco-design and the use of pyrolysis carbon black derived from waste tyres, the company reduced the CO₂ footprint by up to 50%.

At the same time, functionality for automation was improved through expandable “TP straps”, which allow grommets to expand by 20% so that complete connectors can pass through.

In high-current applications, GG Group, Voss and Amphenol introduced “Power2Flow”, a liquid-cooled system capable of enabling charging times of around five minutes while reducing cable cross-sections by up to 84% compared with uncooled solutions.

5. How will digital twins and data continuity change future quality assurance?

Continuous digitalisation forms the backbone of many innovations presented at the Bordnetzkongress 2026. Thiruvenkata Babuji Baskaran (Molex) presented a vision in which physical design verification testing for connectors is increasingly complemented or partially replaced by virtual validation using highly precise digital twins.

Since connector development from concept to production typically takes between 20 and 32 months — with almost half of that time consumed by design loops and validation — this area offers the greatest optimisation potential.

According to Baskaran, Molex reduced design-loop and validation times by 40% using high-fidelity simulation models, while reducing the correlation gap between simulation and real testing to below 10% and in some cases below 5%.

He stressed that standard material models are no longer sufficient: “We need comprehensive, customised material testing capable of capturing different failure mechanisms.” Only then can effects such as strength reductions at weld lines in thin-wall connectors be predicted accurately.

In parallel, Martin Stier and Lutz Lehmann (Telsonic) presented “Telso Assist”, an AI-supported approach for ultrasonic welding. By comparing every weld against a “digital signature” of the target process, the system generates a score between 0 and 1.

“This score contains far more information than traditional process monitoring,” Lehmann explained, since it also evaluates time-dependent process behaviour and can therefore detect hidden faults such as contamination.

This data-driven approach also extends into energy distribution. Martin Baumann (BMW) explained how BMW analyses 20 million current measurement points per day in its Neue Klasse architecture to predict the lifetime of electronic fuses (eFuses).

What remains after the Bordnetzkongress 2026?

The five questions discussed in Ludwigsburg demonstrate how profoundly the industry is changing. Automation, standardisation, digital twins and sustainability are no longer isolated topics. They increasingly interact and collectively define the future of the wiring harness.

As a result, the wiring harness is moving into the centre of the software-defined vehicle. It will increasingly determine how quickly new vehicle architectures can be implemented, how efficiently vehicles can be produced and how credibly sustainability targets can be achieved.

The discussion will continue next year: the Bordnetzkongress returns to Ludwigsburg on 11 and 12 May 2027.

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