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Among other things, it offers an insight into our role as a technological market leader, combined with topics such as “innovative pioneer” – power of innovation as a brand core, and provides information on our exacting claim “HOF quality is the sum of many success factors”.

The clear structure and design make it easy to find the topics you are interested in.

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The Top 100 events, under the scientifi c direction of Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke and mentor Ranga Yogeshwar, are the only competition in Germany that has been awarding medium-sized companies for their innovation management under scientific direction for over 25 years on the market.

HOF has continuously faced the associated selection process since 2016 and has been awarded the TOP 100 seal for the seventh time and is, once again, one of the most innovative companies in Germany.

 „ Accordingly, preparations - from planning to the building permit application- already started before Corona". „When the pandemic started, we started building – nobody knew where it was leading and we dug a large hole", he said with a laugh.
Implementation started quickly and, despite adverse circumstances in regard to material shortages and delivery delays, the construction of the new production hall was completed in August.

450 square meters of floor space for a production hall : it does not sound especially impressive.
But the height is quite imposing, because the new building has a 4770 cubic meters building volume- it is 11 meters high, extended over three floors, and there is also a four-meter-deep pit. What is the need of these height requirements? "In this way, we can set up the equipment over three floors in an identical design as at the customer’s premises on site " - this saves assembly time and finally offers customers security.

Two cranes - one with 40 and one with 20 tons of lifting capacity - were installed to cater for all needs. And an investment was also made in a cooling tower.

With the new production area, HOF has now successfully increased its capacity for installing freeze dryers in a vertical arrangement as a two-story design by 40% and doubled the capacity of its in-house refrigeration workshop.

The cost of the new building was around €3.35 million - plus investment in infrastructure, making the total project worth €3.8 million. "A good investment in the future," says Alexander Hof.

Pressemeldung HOF "Millionen-Investition in die Zukunft" >

However, companies are also subject to the changing times. This leaves a mark on one‘s own corporate image, the same applies to HOF. Corporate messages have to be reconsidered, positioning has to be optimized.

In recent years HOF has continuously developed and has now grown to almost 300 employees.
This further development includes, among other things, the constant search for innovative solutions and this is only possible with excellent technological knowledge, creative curiosity and excellently qualified employees.

This also includes a special technological know-how and an extraordinary innovative strength. Supporting pillars and decisive success factors.

HOF is the professional market leader, a globally recognized company, you can rely on its competence. HOF’s guiding principle is based on values such as respect, fairness and loyalty in dealing with one another.

This is HOF, a living corporate philosophy,

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“It is a great pleasure to be among the winners again. We would like to thank all employees for their motivation and innovative strength and of course our customers for the regular exchange of knowledge."

Kind regards,
Dr. Alexander Hof

HOF will also be among the medium-sized innovation elite in 2021

Since 2016, HOF has been awarded the TOP 100 seal for the sixth time and is once again one of the most innovative companies in Germany.
The TOP 100 seal was awarded for the 28th time and honors Germany's innovation elite in several categories. This award honors particularly innovative companies from a wide variety of industries. The award is based on an independent test based on a scientific system by the scientific director of TOP 100, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke.

Which innovative measures particularly distinguished HOF, among others?

Here is a selection of the most important measures taken by HOF, based on the following categories:

Top management promoting innovation, innovation climate, innovative processes and organization, external orientation / open innovation and innovation success, as well as entrepreneurial reactions to the corona crisis.

• The managing director initiates and pursues innovative development projects himself. In addition, special working hours are granted for innovation projects so that those involved Employees can act and react flexibly. At the same time, the idea of ​​innovation not only spans the products and services of HOF, but also the sustainability of the company.
•  There is a daily and continuous exchange of knowledge between mechanical and electrical construction as well as software development. That promotes the individual personal idea development. At the same time, practical implementation in all Project phases are goal-oriented and accompanied intensively.
• The in-house quality management manages and organizes the collection of ideas for the various areas. The evaluation and implementation is carried out by the management level supervised. In addition, an external QM consultant is involved in the management of the processes involved.
• Meetings are held quarterly with the department heads and an external one Management consultant for quality and improvement management. There will be additional Ideas and innovations introduced are discussed, documented and followed up. Thus becomes a Processing or treatment of 100% of all submitted proposals is guaranteed.
• Thus possible bottlenecks and delivery difficulties of individual suppliers in the Corona crisis can be compensated, exists for all components that we need for our systems, a flexible pool of suppliers.
• Maintenance work on pharmaceutical freezers has been carried out for our customers in Japan Products conducted via web meeting. A team of experts was involved for three days and has the maintenance work of the systems is instructed via live transmission. There were also plants of our customers in Australia and USA set up under instruction via video conference, in operation taken and validated.
• As a prophylaxis for the Covid emergency, a group of service technicians was established in the company optional in order to be quickly ready for service for customers in the event of service.

The scientific director is very impressed by the award-winning medium-sized companies: "The TOP 100 companies have consistently aligned themselves to be as innovative as possible," said Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke.

In essence, it was about the question of whether innovations are the result of a planned procedure or a coincidental product, i.e. the repeatability of innovation achievements. And about whether and how the corresponding solutions will establish themselves on the market

HOF has successfully asserted itself in this demanding selection process and will therefore again be one of the most innovative companies in Germany in 2021.

Award ceremony by mentor Ranga Yogeshwar

Instead of the previous award ceremony in summer, a year-end event is planned for November. The TOP 100 final as part of the German SME Summit on November 26, 2021, in the Forum am Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg.
The science journalist Ranga Yogeshwar will personally congratulate the successful companies, he has accompanied the innovation competition as a mentor for ten years.

Bildquelle: www.TOP100.de

Sigraph announcement:

The CAE system SIGRAPH, used to create circuit diagrams until 2004, has already been discontinued by the manufacturer for some time. Economic processing of the circuit diagrams is therefore unfortunately no longer possible. We can therefore process changes in SIGRAPH diagrams only to a limited extent and must discontinue support for these circuit diagrams from 2022.

For larger modifications, we recommend converting the circuit diagrams to EPLAN P8.

EPLAN 5 announcements:

The CAE system EPLAN 5, used to create circuit diagrams between 2004 and 2016, has been replaced by the EPLAN P8 system. As of version EPLAN P8/2.8, EPLAN 5 can no longer run in a system environment. Furthermore, operation under Windows 10 is not released.
In the future, EPLAN 5 projects must therefore be migrated to P8 to enable further processing.

Bernd Becker (Head of Electronics Engineering)

"If modifications to your affected systems are planned, we will be happy to support you with a future-oriented solution."

Despite all the adversities we are very satisfied with the process and the result of our online seminar. At this point, thank you very much for your participation.
With over 80 participants, we are very satis ed with the response and hope that you have been able to take pro table impulses and insights with you.

We thank you for the trust you have placed in us and look forward to continued good cooperation.

With best regards
Hans-Georg Hof and Dr. Alexander Hof

HOF among TOP 100 companies again

398 companies entered the current round for a TOP 100 award.
TOP 100 uses a scientific system to evaluate the innovation management of SMEs.
This system, which was developed by Prof. Dr Nikolaus Franke, gives equal chances to manufacturing companies and service providers while also taking into account the respective size of the enterprises.
In this independent selection process, HOF and its 265 employees stood out in particular on account of its innovation success.

Finding innovative solutions – exploring new directions

For 30 years, the TOP 100 company has been specialised in the development and manufacturing of freeze drying systems, loading and unloading systems, and freezing and thawing equipment for the pharmaceutical industry. More than 2,000 systems in 27 countries prove the worldwide success of HOF.
Where bottles filled with frozen blood plasma used to be opened by people wearing gloves, this is now the task of a machine from the top innovator. The bottles are partially defrosted in an automatic process, opened with a so-called guillotine and then removed by robots for further processing of the plasma. The new innovative process from HOF is significantly faster and the system can operate around the clock.

“Being open to new things is a sign of a good innovation culture”

Physicist and scientific journalist Ranga Yogeshwar, who has been mentoring the competition since 2011, summarises the qualities of the TOP 100 as follows: “Being open to new things, tolerating mistakes, constantly striving to do things in a new and different way – those are the characteristics of a good innovation culture. A culture that is practised in the SMEs which we award with the TOP 100. They are exceptional medium-sized companies where the spirit of innovation has become part of their DNA. They are far-sighted, active entrepreneurs who focus on innovation every single day.” More information at www.top100.de.

HOF says thank you

“Receiving the award for the fourth time running makes us particularly proud.
We do not take it for granted and we will continue our endeavours to offer our customers the best, most innovative solutions.
But most of all, we want to thank our employees, without whom this success would not be possible.”

Bildquelle: www.TOP100.de

LYOCOM 2018 is based on Siemens TIA Professional 15.1. In contrast to the LYOCOM III system, all system components (freeze drying plant, vial transfer system and visualisation) are integrated in one project, so that the customer only has to manage one software version for the HOF Package Unit.

LYOCOM 2018 is a software for all freeze drying systems in combination with the loading and unloading systems and includes extensive features. The system features easy, intuitive operation, compared with a user-friendly and visually appealing user interface.

LYOCOM 2018 has the following distinguishing features:

• Use of Siemens F-CPU 15xx
• Uniform look and feel for operation of GT and VTS
• Development of a dedicated HOF library as per GAMP 5. Safety through the implemented TIA portal version check and tested module documentation of standard modules
• Fine-grained display of operating equipment down to the basic function level
• Extended service information from display of switching cycles of the operating equipment and optional batch-based performance recording
• Minimising of qualification work by using uniform screens, standardised program modules and a uniform text basis. Only the correct connection to the periphery has to be checked. Visualisation, error message generation, etc. are standardised and no longer require checking
• Extended system diagnosis. Siemens ProDiag was integrated for this purpose. This now makes it possible to display control sequences and interlocks on the visualisation directly from the PLC program, to immediately initiate diagnostics in case of process errors. The control of the door safety was integrated into the GT on an F control, also in the framework of better diagnostic options. Additionally, the Siemens hardware diagnostics are visualised and a torque path of the axes can be recorded for the servo drives during the diagnosis. All system components which are actuated from the control are also visualised and, with the appropriate authorisation, can also be actuated directly or locked, e.g. for service work
• Redundancy in communication by establishing an MRP ring already in the basic version
• The HOF FVP software is used for recipe management and batch logging. This ensures consistency of the recipes, from laboratory applications to the production lines
• Vertical and horizontal data interfaces are executed via Ethernet, allowing flexible interfaces to be mapped. The LYOCOM 2018 system offers interfaces to higher-level systems, e.g. MES and Data Historian. Here, the link to its higher-level system can be implemented individually with an interface to the PU
• Use of a new touch panel with new keyboard for sterile rooms
• Improved parameter mapping of the VTS with display of all parameters on one screen
• Automatic setting of IPC samples using a robot

“We are pleased that we have already been able to successfully integrate the new system into several new plants.”
Patrick Schuhmacher (Head of Software Engineering)