Wire harness manufacturing 2026:
How the harness is being reinvented
Zonal architectures, greater automation and continuous data flows are changing not only the wire harness itself, but also the way it is produced. At the same time, pressure on cost, quality and flexibility is increasing.
The wire harness highlights a striking contradiction in modern vehicle manufacturing. Cars are becoming more digital, more connected and increasingly software-defined, yet a large share of their electrical backbone is still produced and assembled with significant manual labour. At the same time, complexity continues to rise. More sensors, advanced driver-assistance systems and electrical consumers require additional power and data connections, while weight, cost and packaging space are all expected to come down.
Pressure is also increasing on the production side. Raw-material costs, labour inflation, quality issues and complex logistics make manual processes increasingly expensive. Christian Infanger, Director Product Group Harness Assembly at Komax, therefore sees automated pre-assembly as one of the main ways to make harness production more efficient and flexible. But the shift goes further than that. It is no longer enough to change the factory. The wire harness itself increasingly has to be designed around how it will eventually be produced.
Zonal architectures reshape the harness
One of the main drivers is the move towards zonal E/E architectures. Instead of connecting a large number of ECUs through long wiring routes across the vehicle, functions are increasingly grouped into zones. Components can then be connected to the nearest zonal controller.
This can shorten wiring routes and break one large, highly complex harness into several smaller sub-harnesses. Jann Warnecke of FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg sees clear potential here for automation. Shorter and smaller harness sections are easier for machines to manufacture and handle. However, the benefit only remains if additional controllers and variants do not offset the gains elsewhere.
At the same time, complexity can move into the interfaces. Zonal controllers and central computers have to accommodate many electrical connections in limited space. Ole Mende, Head of Wiring Systems at Audi, describes this effect clearly: “The size of zonal computers is no longer defined by what is inside them [...] but by the number of interfaces to the outside world.”
The implication is clear. An E/E architecture that looks simpler on paper is not automatically easier to industrialise. Connectors, wires and interfaces have to be considered from the start.
Automation starts in engineering
Wire harness production is particularly difficult to automate after the fact if the process was originally designed around people. Flexible wires have no fixed shape, connectors can sit in different positions and operators can compensate for small deviations almost instinctively. Robots need defined positions, clear tolerances and repeatable conditions.
That is why Design for Automation is becoming more important. A harness has to be designed so that a machine can grip it, inspect it and install it. An Audi research project shows how significant the difference can be. Ingo Busch describes the current level of automation in large parts of harness manufacturing and assembly as no more than around 10%. In a demonstrator where the product, process and equipment were developed together, the project achieved a much higher level of automation. Busch summarised the result as around 90% automation across manufacturing and assembly.
Komax is taking a similar view by placing more emphasis on automated pre-assembly. Sub-harnesses and modules can already be produced with a high degree of automation using processes such as cutting, crimping, twisting and terminal insertion. Taping, clip assembly and automated routing are also becoming part of the process. By contrast, the final assembly of a complete vehicle harness remains especially labour-intensive and difficult to automate.
This also shows that more automation does not simply mean replacing a person with a robot. In many cases, the bigger opportunity lies in making the product and the process simpler in the first place.
The ID. Polo provides one example. Its interior and front-end harnesses were combined into one continuous strand. A new grommet concept eliminated six coupling points, while logistics effort and production costs in the relevant area were also reduced. Fewer connectors mean less material, less handling and fewer potential failure points.
Continuous data becomes essential
The more these processes are automated, the more important the data behind the product becomes. As a harness moves through production, terminals are applied, connectors populated and tests carried out. If this information is not available at the next production stage, the machine has to identify the product state again.
In the Audi project, not only the physical harness but also its digital “backpack” was carried forward. Connector positions and information from previous manufacturing steps remained available for subsequent robot-assisted assembly.
Behind this sits a highly detailed digital twin. For a relatively small centre-console harness with 85 bill-of-material lines, the resulting data model contained around 3.8 million nodes and 7.5 million edges. Product, process and machine data were linked together in a single model.
The scale of these figures shows how complex the digital representation of even a small harness can become. At the same time, this level of data continuity is an important requirement for flexible automation. A machine does not only need to recognise the physical component. It also needs to know its digital state.
Fewer variants, greater flexibility
Another major obstacle remains the sheer number of different components and variants. Melanie Sohnemann, Head of Wiring Harness Components and Power Distribution at Volkswagen, points to more than 1,000 variants in one existing connector system alone. Depending on the combination, the number of possible configurations can quickly rise to around 200,000.
Volkswagen is therefore placing greater emphasis on modular connector systems. Standardised elements for different contact sizes can be combined within a common housing. This allows a new application to be adapted without developing a completely new connector for every ECU.
The impact goes well beyond component cost. In one example, manufacturing time fell to 18% of the previous level when several individual connectors were replaced by a modular approach. Savings of between 30% and 50% were also cited across two platforms.
For automated production, this is particularly relevant. A machine can deal much more easily with a limited number of clearly defined components than with a constant stream of special solutions. Standardisation does not mean making every vehicle the same. It means managing variety within clear rules.
Quality moves into the production process
Quality control is changing as well. Small harness defects can have major consequences. A poor crimp, an incorrectly seated terminal or a damaged wire may not create a problem until much later. If the fault is only detected at end of line, or even in the finished vehicle, the cost of correction rises sharply.
Automated processes offer an advantage here because process data can be captured directly and linked to individual production steps. Instead of relying mainly on a final end-of-line inspection, manufacturers can increasingly monitor quality as the harness is being built.
At the same time, the vehicle itself is generating more data about the electrical system. Martin Baumann, Development Engineer at BMW, is working on zonal electronic power distribution for the Neue Klasse. Depending on specification, the architecture uses more than 120 electronic fuses on average. In a test fleet of around 1,500 vehicles, roughly 20 million current measurements are generated every day.
Baumann describes the effect as “an oscilloscope on wheels”. Such data shows how strongly wires and components are actually loaded in real operation. In the longer term, these insights can feed back into the development and dimensioning of future electrical systems. Quality control therefore no longer necessarily ends at the factory gate.
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The harness is being decided earlier
All of these developments point in the same direction. The wire harness is no longer becoming a manufacturing topic only after the vehicle architecture has been fixed. Its future production increasingly influences how it is designed in the first place.
Zonal architectures can enable smaller sub-harnesses. Modularisation can reduce variants. Automated pre-assembly can move work out of labour-intensive final assembly. Digital models can connect individual production stages, while new electronic components generate data that can improve both development and quality.
This also means OEMs, harness suppliers, component manufacturers and automation specialists have to work together earlier. Whether a harness can later be produced in an automated way is already influenced by its architecture, its connectors and its data model.
The transformation of wire harness manufacturing is therefore not about one new machine. It is about changing the logic of production itself. The factory can no longer be expected to adapt to the harness alone. Increasingly, the harness has to be designed so that it can be manufactured efficiently, flexibly and with stable quality.
