Attending the signing ceremony, which took place during the Tianjin-Frankfurt Cooperation Forum, Peter Tyroller, the member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH responsible for Asia Pacific, said: “China’s new urbanisation has put smart-city solutions on the map as one of the key drivers of urban development. Cities need to provide increasing levels of convenience, energy efficiency, and security. We are pleased to have the opportunity to offer Tianjin our connected solutions as a way of improving quality of life and creating an economically more efficient city.” With the sensors, software, and services the Bosch Group provides as an innovation-driven IoT company, it is well positioned to help take China into the smart-city era.

In the rough triangle encompassing Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei province, China is planning an international metropolitan area. With more than 15 million inhabitants, Tianjin will be an important industrial centre and transport hub within this area. With this in mind, the Tianjin municipal government has set up a “Smart Tianjin” initiative. As part of this initiative, Bosch will design a smart-city blueprint for Tianjin, sharing and leveraging experience accumulated in other international smart-city projects, and taking local needs into consideration. To be closer to its client, Bosch will set up a project office in Tianjin.

Bosch will contribute the know-how it has gained so far from other smart-city projects, including Singapore, San Francisco, Stuttgart, Berlin, and the Hamburg docks. For smart cities, Bosch offers solutions in the areas of mobility, energy, buildings, security, and e-governance – in other words, digital city administration. In the mobility sphere, its solutions include environmental monitoring, connected parking, fleet management, e-mobility, and multimodal transport. When it comes to energy, the range includes virtual power plants, energy-efficient heating, hot water, and cooling systems, as well as energy storage units. The security solutions encompass systems for fire protection, access control, and video surveillance. For residential buildings, Bosch provides smart home technology and connected household appliances. As for e-governance, the range includes the community app and the city data platform.

In 2016, the Bosch Group recorded sales of 12.5 billion euros in China. This means that the supplier of technology and services increased its sales by 12 percent year on year, a rise of 19 percent in local currency. With some 59,000 associates, China is also home to Bosch’s largest workforce outside Germany.