CISC Employee Spotlight
Interview
Getting to know Johannes Lehrhofer
Business Unit Manager Industrial IoT
Tell us about your professional background
My high interest in innovative technical solutions improving our daily life led to more than 20 years in the electronics industry. Either being responsible for granting personal identity and authenticity based upon a high secure contactless IC or driving an excellent piezo micro motor solution not requiring any magnetic field – the core topic of all my tasks was to implement and establish new, innovative ideas as easy-to-use commodity products.
What does your new role entail?
Industrial IoT was successively established in the last decade getting a strongly growing market nowadays. Detecting and defining CISCs blue ocean within the huge sea of IIoT, perfectly matching it with our key expertise as well as core customer/market needs are the major topics to successfully work on.
What are the key challenges in IIoT?
Key topics are the seamless integration of sensors via gateways with edge computing, machine learning, and cloud solutions – whether a ‘central’ or a local cloud – in a solution precisely meeting the customer’s needs. This aims to enhance product quality as well as production efficiencies like lowering the percentage of defective goods or energy consumption. All kinds of interfaces and connections have to be available as well as appropriate security levels are required – for physical units as well as for the management and transmission of data.
How can CISC contribute to solving these challenges?
Based upon CISCs key competencies wireless, security as well as agile, and quick customer-centric solutions, there’s an IIoT specific solution portfolio like an IIoT terminal for remote control and maintenance of existing systems. Another unit, CISCs edge gateway manages distributed wireless sensors and provides the base for our End2End security connector – from the sensor up to the cloud. With the edge gateway, new sensors can be added to the measurement systems easily as well as the gateway is powerful enough to evaluate the measurements and detect irregularities.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
As my two children have taken responsibility for themselves – Anna with a Master in Chemistry works in research projects, Theo is studying Electrical Engineering in Graz – I can follow my personal interests ‘full spare time’ again: I like hiking in the mountains with my wife or listening to music, covering L’Arpeggiata, John Coltrane or Nick Cave. Chasing the ball on a soccer field, diving deep for the silence underwater, and reading books which provide me a virtual universe to relax.
