Miele domestic appliance app for Qivicon Home Base to be launched at IFA trade show

'One for all' is the principle behind the Qivicon networking platform which is both interdisciplinary and cross-brand, uniting smart home applications on a single technological platform. Miele is a Qivicon founder member. From September 2014 onwards, owners of Miele domestic appliances will be able to activate an application on their Qivicon portal enabling the status of appliances to be queried and machines to be controlled from anywhere.

'Have I switched the oven off?' – Everyone has at some time experienced nagging doubts like this after leaving the house. With a new app, appliance owners will in future be on the safe side: a simple glance at their smartphone or tablet PC will provide instantaneous confirmation of the status of washing machine et al. In the set of circumstances described above, the user will be able to remotely check up on things at home – essentially from anywhere.

The central control hub of this networking platform spanning all appliances and domestic installations is the Qivicon Home Base. This uses a variety of apps to offer intelligent energy management as well as offering solutions to enhance safety and convenience at home. For the owners of Miele appliances, this means for example the ability to read off from a tablet PC how long the washing machine in the utility room or kitchen still has to run or receive convenient reminders to turn or baste the roast in the oven. The freezer can be notified in advance to switch to 'SuperFrost' when a shopping trolley is laden with fresh food. Safety-relevant functions are naturally exempted from remote control. It is therefore not possible to, say, remotely switch a hob unit or switch off a refrigerator.

From washing machine to coffee maker, Miele appliances from virtually all product categories can be integrated into this application. All that is needed is a Miele@home-enabled domestic appliance with a communication module (a 

retrofit kit may be necessary for certain models). In addition to this, the Qivicon Home Base must be fitted with a corresponding RF transmitter and connected to the Internet via an off-the-shelf router.

Qivicon is an alliance of leading industrial companies in Germany under the auspices of Deutsche Telekom which aims to promote SmartHome applications. Miele is a founding member of Qivicon. The Qivicon Smart Home platform is compatible with a wide range of products and apps from numerous brands and is modular and scalable.

The Miele domestic appliance app will be free-of-charge at the time of going to market.

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Company profile: Miele is the world's leading manufacturer of premium domestic appliances including cooking, baking and steam-cooking appliances, refrigeration products, coffee makers, dishwashers and laundry and floor care products. This line-up is augmented by dishwashers, washer-extractors and tumble dryers for commercial use as well as washer-disinfectors and sterilisers for use in medical and laboratory applications (Miele Professional). The Miele company, founded in 1899, has 8 production plants in Germany as well as one plant each in Austria, the Czech Republic, China and Romania. 2013/14 turnover amounted to approx. EUR 3.22 bn with sales outside Germany accounting for around 70%. Miele is represented with its own sales subsidiaries and via importers in almost 100 countries. The Miele company, now in the fourth generation of family ownership, employs a workforce of around 17,660, 10,411 thereof in Germany. The company headquarters are located in Gütersloh/Westphalia, Germany.