Digitization for process optimization

Many com­pa­nies see dig­i­ti­za­tion as an impor­tant step for future suc­cess. They are there­fore try­ing to opti­mize their process­es in order to strength­en their own mar­ket posi­tion. For the fam­i­lyrun com­pa­ny Maschi­nen­fab­rik Gus­tav Eirich, opti­miz­ing pro­duc­tion process­es and intel­li­gent­ly net­work­ing equip­ment is a step towards greater effi­cien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This cre­ates flex­i­ble man­u­fac­tur­ing struc­tures, which are high­ly impor­tant in such a dynam­ic mar­ket. With its dig­i­tal prod­uct port­fo­lio, the com­pa­ny has also tak­en the issue of cus­tomer prox­im­i­ty to a new lev­el: from fast spare parts order­ing to tech­ni­cal sup­port from the spe­cial­ist staff at the machine fac­to­ry, the com­pa­ny wants to offer its cus­tomers even more ser­vice and thresh­old-free acces­si­bil­i­ty through dig­i­tal offerings. 

“How can a repro­cess­ing plant that we deliv­er to a cus­tomer today, as a sys­tem, always move in an opti­mum with­out the cus­tomer hav­ing to resort to expe­ri­enced experts, who can be found less and less? This knowl­edge must be imple­ment­ed in the sys­tem by the machine sup­pli­er. We see this as a great oppor­tu­ni­ty and have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to our cus­tomers. With Life Cycle Ser­vice and Process Ana­lyt­ics, we offer our focus indus­tries real added val­ue to improve pro­duc­tion process­es safe­ly and sustainably.” 

- Stephan Eirich, Man­ag­ing Director

Life Cycle Ser­vice enables trans­par­ent ser­vice, via real-time mon­i­tor­ing of plants to an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty main­te­nance ser­vice. The solu­tions focus on opti­miz­ing plant down­time and stoppages: 

- myEirich 

The elec­tron­ic spare parts cat­a­log enables cus­tomers to inde­pen­dent­ly and intu­itive­ly iden­ti­fy installed com­po­nents using visu­al mod­els. The shop­ping cart rounds off the Ser­vice­Ex­pert ECD soft­ware. Required machine and sys­tem parts can be placed there and the order­ing process can be trig­gered direct­ly by e‑mail. The appli­ca­tion pro­vides real-time infor­ma­tion on the pro­cess­ing sta­tus of a ser­vice order and live track­ing of the ship­ping status. 

- Con­di­tion monitoring 

The sys­tem is based on record­ing the con­di­tion of the machine by mea­sur­ing and ana­lyz­ing phys­i­cal vari­ables. Sen­sors pro­vide data in real time. Per­ma­nent eval­u­a­tion makes it pos­si­ble to show trends and detect pos­si­ble dam­age to com­po­nents even before a fail­ure occurs. Crash­es, bear­ing dam­age, imbal­ance, gear­box faults and wear are detect­ed and dis­played at an ear­ly stage. The cus­tomer can order spare parts or con­tact the ser­vice depart­ment at an ear­ly stage, before the machine breaks down or he has to put up with wait­ing times for ser­vice engineers. 

- Tele­ser­vice 

Ser­vice with­out a tech­ni­cian on site with remote ser­vice and diag­no­sis. The auto­mat­ic acqui­si­tion of machine and process data and their analy­sis enables fault local­iza­tion from a dis­tance. After the cus­tomer’s approval, trou­bleshoot­ing mea­sures can be ini­ti­at­ed imme­di­ate­ly and a cus­tomized update of the soft­ware can be car­ried out with­out an on-site visit. 

- EIRICH AR Services

Via aug­ment­ed real­i­ty, the spe­cial­ist can get a vir­tu­al overview of the con­di­tion of the plant using a smart­phone cam­era and smart­glass­es. Using advanced 3D object track­ing, they can anno­tate the dis­play with arrows, notes and mark­ers that make it easy for the user to fol­low the expert’s instruc­tions. This max­i­mizes pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, reduces down­time and, most impor­tant­ly, saves time and money. 

With dig­i­tal tools for process ana­lyt­ics, the com­pa­ny offers opti­miza­tion solu­tions that safe­ly and reli­ably improve pro­duc­tion processes: 

- Qual­i­Mas­ter with EIRICH ProView.

The indi­vid­ual sys­tems are a guar­an­tee of qual­i­ty in their respec­tive areas of appli­ca­tion. Auto­mat­i­cal­ly, the sys­tem con­tin­u­ous­ly takes and exam­ines sam­ples from the mix and mea­sures them in a vari­ety of ways. The ProView soft­ware visu­al­izes and ana­lyzes this deter­mined data. High user-friend­li­ness, clear dis­play and many set­ting options give the user a mul­ti­tude of pos­si­bil­i­ties to mon­i­tor and con­trol process engi­neer­ing process­es. The results can be eval­u­at­ed by spe­cial­ist per­son­nel or by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in order to suc­ces­sive­ly improve the sub­se­quent batches.