We have a heterogeneous world: we have to work with a lot of machine data and also integrate different systems.

Responsible plant manager

25%

Increased productivity

with the plant employees

15%

Increased outcome

of production in the year

ROI

in less than 12 months

for the first 10 applications

Optimum data utilization and efficiency in production through low-code applications

Leading electrical and energy technology manufacturer increases flexibility in line production, thereby boosting productivity while reducing costs and successfully implementing the Connected Worker approach.

The manufacturing industry in particular has the opportunity to benefit from the enormous potential of digital transformation: increased productivity, falling production costs, increased competitiveness and zero downtime. At the same time, the variety of data used from business systems and machines makes manual processes very time-consuming. Providing, recording and processing data and ensuring availability are processes that generate additional work alongside the actual activity. Digital applications are therefore indispensable for successful process handling in this industry.

Our client, a leading electrical and energy technology manufacturer, was facing significant challenges in the digitalization of the production line within the division at one of its southern German sites. The focus in production is on customer-specific projects for low-voltage electric motors with a batch size of 1. These require a high proportion of manual production, meaning that people still play an important role in the result.

The following challenges had to be solved at the plant in question:

Paper-based processes
Obtaining and passing on information was very time-consuming for plant employees.

Decentralized data basis
Either there were too many different data sources or the data was incomplete.

Isolated solutions
made data transparency and quality more difficult and were sometimes incompatible with ERP systems such as SAP.

Difficult data entry
Data was entered multiple times by employees, resulting in additional work.

Process breaks
Use of several tools for one process step, e.g. recording, rectifying and invoicing faults.

Necessary measures

Streamlining processes and increasing transparency were therefore essential. In future, workers were to interact seamlessly and just-in-time with data from different systems and machines. Manual processes were to be gradually digitalized. The aim was for the so-called connected worker to complete their work in a fraction of the time in future, with documentation processes being simplified and without media disruptions. This has the added benefit of reducing or even completely eliminating errors during data entry and transfer.

Flexible use of smart devices, be it a smartwatch, a smartphone or even a tablet, was an important prerequisite for the mobile solutions mentioned. Intuitive operation – as is familiar and tried and tested in the private sphere – was a decisive criterion for the acceptance of the applications among users.

In the search for an adequate solution and in order to reduce the dependency on implementation outside the specialist area, the customer came across the low-code development platform and Simplifier. The technology enabled new synergies to be identified. For the first time, it was possible to implement the very individual requirements in production with the existing heterogeneous landscape precisely and promptly, using all the necessary data and realizing the whole thing with the company’s own resources.

The ability to build the required IT software themselves and not end up with a demand ticket or having to request it from third parties was very appealing to the customer. “With Simplifier, we were able to take things into our own hands and control which applications, functions and front ends we build ourselves. We can implement applications that are also modular, that are small, and yet still meet exactly the needs we have in the workshops, logistics and also in the office areas,” says the plant manager of the Motion Control division enthusiastically.

This reduced a large part of the dependency on IT and solutions were implemented much faster at the individual stations. Thanks to low-code technology, employees with specialist knowledge from the production area could be deployed. With Simplifier, they were able to build, test and maintain the applications independently. Uniform usability and user experience, as well as the use of all smart devices deployed, also resulted in significantly greater acceptance among users – the connected workers.

Further advantages were that the self-explanatory use of the new applications made the training process much simpler and reduced employee training to almost zero.

With Simplifier’s agile development environment, the customer was able to go live with the first applications within just a few weeks. Five employees familiarized themselves with the platform within a few days, created the connection to all relevant systems and thus the basis for being able to implement future applications within the plant in a short time.

The first functional application was implemented after just 24 hours with the support of Simplifier and was made available live in the first iteration. This allowed important user feedback to be collected so that the app could be further developed in just a few steps to sustainably increase productivity in a key process step. The development phase took place directly in the specialist department without IT involvement, the employees of the respective stations were included in the tests and the feedback was incorporated directly, without long coordination loops and complicated specifications.

The resulting application for incident management ensured that incidents were efficiently processed, evaluated and significantly reduced in the long term. As the manual entry of incidents into the connected SAP ERP system was completely eliminated by the new app, they could be processed conveniently. This offered the plant employees enormous added value.

The customer was able to take 8 apps live within the plant in the first 6 months and increase productivity by 25 percent, which increased the output of production by almost 15 percent in one year and the number of electric motors produced per month from 13 to 14.

If you look at the ROI when using Simplifier to create the first 10 applications, according to the customer, an ROI of less than 12 months can be assumed. On the one hand, this is due to the minimization of risk in the creation process, where applications with a modular architecture are used instead of complex solutions. On the other hand, there is a high degree of flexibility thanks to the reusability of the application components and connectors, which can easily be used in other applications. Processes within an app template can be exchanged or adapted to requirements at any time. This plays a decisive role in the effort and cost analysis, as there is great potential for savings compared to the conventional creation process. The average savings here were 50 percent. Overall, the cost structure is much leaner thanks to the use of in-house developers and on-board resources, meaning that the applications can be implemented much more cost-effectively, according to the customer. Paralyzing project management and additional commercial processes are eliminated or drastically reduced. The agile doer mentality thus leads to greater efficiency and more productivity in IT.

In the next step, Simplifier is to become the standard tool for 10 additional employees who previously used Excel macros or costly and time-consuming IT systems to generate applications.

The plant and the entire production line are to be supplied with many small, multi-value, mobile applications in this way. This will drive independence and digitalization throughout the division and establish the Connected Worker working model.

The aim is to gradually replace the existing legacy solutions, such as those based on Excel Macro, Lotus Notes and Access, and make them available via new technologies in order to ultimately further increase the plant’s productivity.

Electrical and energy technology manufacturer

Main location in Nuremberg

> 300.000 Employees