thyssenkrupp's powertrain division is digitizing the shopfloor management at all its manufacturing sites worldwide. The global market leader for assembled camshafts now also relies on the open CONTACT Elements platform for production control and plant maintenance.
As a partner of all major automotive manufacturers, thyssenkrupp develops innovative powertrain solutions. The company manages global collaboration in its R&D projects with CONTACT's CIM Database PLM. Thereby, the Elements technology platform ensures uniform processes and consistent data across the company with its core services and standard integrations to SAP and other IT systems. The automotive supplier now also wants to use this platform to digitize the shopfloor management.
The starting point for the Industry 4.0 project was initially the replacement of a legacy system for maintenance. "A proof-of-concept impressively showed that we could also use CONTACT Elements for efficient production control," says Thomas Binder, Head of Operations at thyssenkrupp's engine component manufacturer. "That's why we opted for an overall solution that enables end-to-end processes in both directions, from development to production to plant maintenance."
thyssenkrupp and CONTACT Software are implementing an integrated application environment for complete order processing in production. The new production control solution provides plant employees with the work documents they need, visualizes relevant key figures such as good/bad parts, throughput times, or error messages in dashboards, and tracks them back to the enterprise systems.
Via the common CONTACT Elements platform, the operational data from the ten global production sites of thyssenkrupp's powertrain business can also be used in future for predictive maintenance, spare parts procurement or product improvements (closed-loop engineering). The new IoT applications are scheduled to go live at the end of 2021 and will be further expanded after roll-out.
"The powertrain division is pursuing a consistent digitization strategy and plans to gradually migrate the island solutions that are still in place," says André Mensing, CONTACT's Strategic Account Manager for the thyssenkrupp Group. "This increases productivity along the industrial value chain and strengthens the position as a technologically leading automotive supplier."
