Komax with self-designed solar robot at this year's LUGA
Inside Komax
Komax’s presence at the special “tunZentralschweiz.ch” show at this year’s spring fair LUGA in Lucerne was all about innovation, practice and promoting young talent. Komax trainees specially designed a solar robot for this purpose, which could be assembled and operated on the stand. The main aim of Komax? To get children and young people interested in the fascinating world of technical professions and, who knows, even attract the odd inventor or creative tinker for a future in the wire processing industry. We wanted to find out what Sol-E is all about and how Komax encourages and promotes innovative thinking and behavior from the responsible vocational trainer Matthias Wüller.
Constructing the Sol-E robot at the LUGA 2025 (video)
If you wanted to experience technology live and explore your own inquiring mind, the Komax booth at this year’s spring fair LUGA in Lucerne, Switzerland, was the place to be. As part of the special tunZentralschweiz.ch show focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), trainees from Komax were on hand to help children and young people. They gave tips, shared their enthusiasm for technology with them, talked about their apprenticeships and everyday working life at Komax and thus facilitated a direct exchange at eye level.
However, the real star of the Komax booth was the solar robot Sol-E, which the Komax trainees had designed especially for the LUGA. The young visitors had the chance to assemble it themselves and try it out on a test track. With the help of a halogen spotlight that simulated the sun, they helped Sol-E reach its destination and symbolically return from Mars to Earth. The experiment combined mechanical and electronic components and was not only fun, but also taught technical basics and skills that are crucial for modern technical professions in a playful way. But how is it that robots are also being made at Komax? And how do you prepare career starters and trainees to think innovatively and even contribute to the creation of world firsts in the future? That’s what we wanted to know from Matthias Wüller, Team Leader Vocational Training at Komax in Dierikon.
Matthias Wüller, the Komax Group is globally renowned for its innovative solutions within the wire processing industry. What does a robot have to do with this?
Although industrial robots, robot cells or production line robots are already being used by our customers to automate testing and production processes, the Komax Group itself does not produce robots. However, the knowledge and technology behind robotics is of course also of interest to our trainees and can be applied to various solutions in our industry. The Sol-E project was about training technical understanding, manual dexterity and assembly skills, i.e. assembling the robot correctly using instructions. In addition, we at Komax are specifically looking for innovative and out-of-the-box thinkers who enjoy tinkering, inventing and generally creating solutions that help our customers achieve greater innovative strength, consistently high quality and thus a competitive advantage.
How did the project with Sol-E come about?
For the tunZentralschweiz.ch special exhibition focusing on STEM professions, we wanted to create an experiment that would captivate young visitors, be suitable for children, easy to understand and require active participation. That’s why we looked for an idea internally. We came across the computer-animated movie Wall·E and were inspired by it. The whole project took three weeks and was carried out independently by two polymechanics trainees, Nicolas and Nils, from the third respectively fourth year of their apprenticeship. Under my supervision, of course. Nicolas took care of the construction and the various assembly kits that Sol-E consists of. And he wrote all the assembly instructions by himself. Nils’ task was to construct the halogen spotlights and to plan and implement the route on which Sol-E was to be brought back to Earth from Mars. Both were given the opportunity to contribute and implement their ideas, construct and even paint everything themselves. To find out how Sol-E would be received by the younger generation and how intuitively the experiment was designed, we presented it to our first-year trainees for testing. With success and thoroughly positive feedback.
For decades, the Komax Group has been creating pioneering products and solutions that are known worldwide. How do you prepare young people for an environment in which the creation of innovation is the rule and not the exception?
In order to prepare young people specifically for an innovative working environment during their training, it is important to offer practice- and future-oriented projects. Our trainees are allowed to actively contribute their ideas and even implement some of them. In this way, they gain valuable experience in the field of creative problem solving and learn to apply innovative approaches in practice. There are, of course, differences depending on the educational direction but also the personality of the trainees. There are trainees who naturally have a strong sense of innovation, are curious, hungry for knowledge and extremely creative. For others, this is less the case. We also consider these personal characteristics and encourage them in a targeted manner.
Furthermore, we promote independent learning and working to strengthen the ability to adapt quickly to new challenges. We have an open error culture. Making mistakes is allowed and nobody is punished if something doesn’t go as planned. Basically, however, all our trainees work in a highly innovative environment from day one and are involved in the development of new products and solutions. They are in contact with our experts who have decades of experience and are part of our well-mixed teams of specialists. This prepares them from the outset to operate confidently in a dynamic, technology-driven environment. At Komax, we also attach great importance to mutual respect and friendliness. Every employee is a valuable part of the bigger picture, regardless of whether they are a specialist with 40 years of professional experience or a first-year trainee.