April 2025 Connector Industry News

Upcoming industry events, as well as recent award, partnership, promotion, personnel, facility, distribution, standards, association, and certification news from across the connector industry.

April 2025 Connector Industry News

April 2025 Connector Industry News > Event News

Mouser Electronics is once again a platinum sponsor of the Create the Future Design Contest, a global challenge to engineers and innovators to design the next great thing. The contest opened for entries on March 3 and closes on July 1, 2025. The grand prize winner receives worldwide recognition and a cash prize of $25,000 for an innovative product that benefits society and the economy. Previous contests have produced more than 15,000 design ideas from engineers, entrepreneurs, and students in more than 100 countries. The Create the Future Design Contest brings attention to product designs that enhance humanity, improve healthcare quality, or help provide sustainable solutions. Previous grand prize-winning entries include self-destroying plastics, a self-contained organ and limb transport device, and an economical rapid-screening device to prevent food-borne illness. The grand prize winner will be chosen from the winners in seven entry categories: Aerospace and Defense, Automotive/Transportation, Electronics, Manufacturing and Materials, Medical, Robotics and Automation, and Energy, Power & Propulsion. Mouser has sponsored the contest for over a decade.

April 2025 Connector Industry News > Award News

TE Connectivity has been named among the Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovators 2025, an annual list of organizations that prioritize innovation as a business strategy. TE has been named to this list 12 times since Clarivate created the recognition in 2012. As part of ongoing initiatives to deliver new innovations to customers around the world, TE has more than 15,000 patents granted or pending and has invested more than $750 million in research, development, and engineering in the past fiscal year. Additionally, the company last week published its annual Industrial Technology Index, a research report that provides the marketplace with insights into how companies around the world are managing critical innovation issues.

Kyocera Corporation, parent company of KYOCERA AVX, was also named to the list for the ninth time. The Top 100 Global Innovators rankings are generated by the Clarivate Center for IP and Innovation Research. Their analyses are underpinned by rigorous research leveraging the proprietary Derwent Strength Index, derived from the Derwent World Patents Index and global patent data to measure the influence of ideas, their success and rarity, and the investment in inventions.

April 2025 Connector Industry News > Personnel & Acquisitions News

Helmut Pusch, Schaltbau GmbH

Helmut Pusch has taken over the global management of the Schaltbau GmbH Group as CEO. An electrical engineer with over 30 years of experience in sales, marketing, product management, and business development, Pusch brings extensive expertise in growth strategies, international expansion, and digital transformation. Prior to joining Schaltbau, he served as chief sales officer at DEHN SE, where he successfully led global expansion, strategic customer and market development, as well as digital transformation. In his leadership role, a comprehensive growth strategy was developed and successfully executed, resulting in a threefold increase in company revenue over eight years. As an expert in internationalization and scaling, Pusch has successfully expanded companies into over 70 countries and established and expanded subsidiaries in the USA, India, South Africa, Mexico, Singapore, Middle East, China, and Europe in industries such as e-mobility, renewable energy, as well as mission critical infrastructure, including smart grids and railway.

April 2025 Connector Industry News > Facility News

Smiths Interconnect announced the expansion of its cable harness production capacity at its facility in Tunisia. The expansion includes the addition of state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment and the implementation of advanced production processes that allow customers to improve their value chain with a one-stop-shop delivering connectors with cable harnessed to it. This reduces lead times and supports sustainability through less movement of goods and packaging. The full manufacturing process includes cutting and stripping, crimping, soldering, overmolding, ink printing for marking, and quality testing and inspection

Watch the Smiths Interconnect Cable Harness  production capacity video here. 

April 2025 Connector Industry News > Partnership and Distribution News

DigiKey announced a collaboration with SparkFun to bring experiential robotics platform (XRP) kits to the next generation of engineers, developers, and innovators. The XRP open-source platform is an educational, easy-to-use robotics program designed to equip the next generation of makers with hands-on STEM skills. Educators can use the beginner-friendly XRP curriculum, which lowers the barriers to learning robotics, engineering, software development, and automation. Making the XRP robotics kit accessible to emerging STEM leaders aligns with DigiKey’s mission to foster innovation and education by providing hands-on experiences that reveal the numerous opportunities available for students and makers’ futures. XRP is an affordable, easy-to-use gateway to robotics education. The kit is available for $114.95. This year, DigiKey is offering educators and FIRST Robotics teams a discount on the XRP kit, allowing more students to participate in robotics programs.

Weidmuller USA introduces the PRO Partner Program, an exclusive initiative for the organization’s elite distribution partners in the United States. The first PRO Partners welcomed into the program include: H. H. Barnum Company, based in Brighton, Michigan.; GDL Industrial Electronics, based in Midland, Texas; Hermitage Automation & Controls, based in Ashland, Virginia.; Steiner Electric Company, based in Itasca, Illinois; and Viking Electric, based in St. Paul, Minnesota. The program aims to recognize and reward Weidmuller’s most committed partners based on their previous sales performance and future growth potential. Weidmuller offers an array of benefits to PRO Partners, including sales growth support, custom marketing expertise, training resources, and brand opportunities. Additionally, PRO Partners can enjoy price benefits, white glove support, and a rebate program.

April 2025 Connector Industry News > New Technical Resources

DigiKey announced its continued sponsorship of KiCad, the leading open-source electronic design automation (EDA) suite, reinforcing a shared commitment to advancing open-source tools for the electrical engineering community. KiCad’s mission is to provide the best possible cross platform electronics design application for professional electronics designers. The organization has been instrumental in providing an accessible, approachable program, enabling engineers, students, and professionals to design PCBs without the constraints of costly software licenses. DigiKey has been supporting KiCad for seven years, helping to increase community-submitted donations to contribute to critical feature enhancements, usability improvements, and long-term sustainability of KiCad version 10. To contribute to KiCad’s fund drive or learn more about DigiKey’s commitment to open-source initiatives, visit KiCad.org or DigiKey.com.

Molex released a new report from AirBorn, a Molex company, entitled “Defining and Advancing Rugged, Reliable Connectivity in Aerospace and Defense.” The report addresses top connector design, development, and testing requirements to ensure flawless performance despite prolonged exposure to extreme environmental, mechanical, and thermal stressors. Designing connectors for aerospace and defense requires precise alignment of multiple features—from mating cycles to shielding and sealing—as part of a holistic connector ecosystem. A precise balance is needed to combine capabilities while minimizing design trade-offs, whether enhancing sealing, strengthening latching mechanisms or adding more shielding. Ensuring durability over time necessitates finding and alleviating key failure points while boosting mechanical resilience, environmental adaptability and operational longevity.

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