How to successfully implement digitalisation

To succeed in digitalisation, you need to start by addressing four questions from both a business and technical perspective: What are the critical challenges in production that can enhance profitability? What information is required to meet these challenges? How can you efficiently access the necessary process information? And how can this data be transformed into decision support and feedback for production?

Once you have answers to these questions, the next step is to identify the area where digitalisation can initially have the most significant impact. There are numerous opportunities for improvement, so it's essential to begin by identifying your most critical challenge. Is it data security, energy, preventive maintenance, OEE, or something else?

Efficiency is a combination of several different challenges. Therefore, the key to successful digitalisation is to have a clear goal. A good strategy is to initially focus on the most evident benefits and then expand the project step by step.

For this reason, it's beneficial to build on a modular digital platform that is both flexible and scalable, allowing you to quickly generate value, and then scale up gradually.

In the first step, we recommend starting with a single machine or the area where you believe there is the greatest potential to identify opportunities for improving production efficiency. By easily connecting individual signals and using ready-made applications for HMI and PLC, which can be loaded via SD cards, you can immediately monitor and take action. This can relate to machine status, production outcomes, reasons for stoppages, or OEE. It can be done on a daily, hourly, shift-based, or order basis, both in real-time and historically through built-in logging. The solution is entirely configured through the intuitive operator interface. The same interface is also used by the operator during operation to input the reasons for stoppages, which serve as the basis for consolidated tracking.

Adding several more machines and obtaining consolidated production tracking for an entire production unit is as simple as the initial standalone installation. The central data collection relies on a standardised data structure where each machine has unique data collected, which is processed, filtered, analysed, and supplemented with the information necessary for your production. The necessary connections to databases and business systems are also part of this solution.

Efficient production depends on ensuring that the right person receives the right decision support at the right time. With our solution, basic templates to display consolidated production data are provided. This quickly gives an overview of how your entire operation is performing, both in real-time and historically. Of course, these presentation views can be adjusted based on the data to be presented, the recipient, and the platform on which the information will be displayed.