From connectors to connectivity: the Fischer family has created the technology group Conextivity

The Fischer family founded Conextivity^® Group to meet the connectivity challenge posed by the emergence of new cross-functional and scalable ecosystems, from locally interconnected devices and sensors to cloud-managed IoT platforms. With nearly 600 people worldwide, four R&D centers and six manufacturing sites, the Swiss-headquartered technology group serves as a single-source partner across the entire value chain of connectivity, leveraging the expertise, innovation capabilities and technologies of two business activities: Fischer Connectors® and Wearin’®.

‘Conextivity’: the family group’s new identity denotes an ambitious entrepreneurial and technological vision, since it refers to the future of connectivity (next) that Fischer Connectors and Wearin’ are cocreating (co/con, ‘with’) in partnership with their customers.

With this vision, summarized by the motto ‘Reimagining Connectivity’, the family-owned company, founded in 1954, is transforming itself from a connector supplier into a full-service partner for high-performance connectivity.

The connectivity challenge to be met

With its two business activities, Fischer Connectors and Wearin’, Conextivity Group offers a suite of products, solutions and services that span the entire connectivity value chain.

The goal is to meet the challenge posed by the rise of ubiquitous connected devices and sensors. These generate massive and exponential amounts of data and information to support decision making, especially in mission-critical applications as well as in the Internet of Things (IoT). The first technology challenge is to integrate end-to-end connectivity that not only establishes the physical connection between sensors and communication devices that need to be interoperable in increasingly demanding environments. In addition, there is the challenge of optimizing and harmonizing power and data flows at increasingly high performance and speed, and transmitting these data to the cloud infrastructures that enable them to be processed.

This combination of requirements in terms of performance, reliability, robustness and interoperability applies in particular in the cross-functional and scalable ecosystems found in mission-critical industries such as defense and security, medical, high-precision test and measurement instrumentation, robotics, first responders and wearables for the connected human.

System-level engineering

Solving the connectivity equation in these demanding environments requires a system-level engineering approach. This comprehensive approach enables the customer’s entire ecosystem to operate seamlessly and reliably. Optimized power and data flow performance and signal integrity are ensured throughout the connectivity chain, from connectors, cables, transmitters, receivers and electronics in locally connected devices to embedded software operating on physical and/or digital IoT platforms in the cloud.

“Connectivity is of crucial importance in our hyper-connected world,” explains Jonathan Brossard, CEO since 2016 and belonging to the 3^rd generation of the Fischer family. “When it is as efficient, reliable and innovative as ours, and when it is applicable to extremely demanding operating environments, it plays a critical role. In this respect, our system-level engineering approach and our holistic vision for our industry expresses nothing less than our sense of responsibility: to reimagine connectivity that creates lasting value in the group’s traditional and new markets.”

Conextivity Group is aiming for a revenue of one billion Swiss francs within 10 years. To increase its commercial responsiveness on both global and regional levels, the group is continuing to invest in its industrial facilities and its research and development teams. Spread over four centers around the world, R&D has doubled its workforce in the last five years and has acquired new business expertise, particularly in signal integrity engineering, embedded electronics, the cloud and the IoT.

The family group is unveiling its new identity and technological vision to the public at a time when its R&D and commercial departments are accelerating the developments and deployments of Fischer Connectors and Wearin’. The former is broadening its scope of activity to include electronics and building a production site in Portugal. Wearin’ is expanding its IoT solution and signing technology partnerships to improve the safety and efficiency of the connected human; in May, it was at the heart of a European civil protection exercise to test technologies available to first responders in the event of large-scale disasters.