The BSH plant in Bad Neustadt an der Saale has 450 employees and produces 9,000 vacuum cleaners a day - with a high level of vertical integration and expertise in Industry 4.0. BSH Hausgeräte produces Bosch and Siemens brand vacuum cleaners and blowers for other plants at this plant. The flexible and highly automated production enables the competitive manufacture of household appliances "Made in Germany". Maintenance makes a significant contribution to this. After all, it is their task to maintain the high productivity and performance of the machines and systems - in plastic injection molding as well as in blower production and final assembly. Many "self-made" systems are used for this. The maintenance staff are also responsible for the test systems used by the developers to test new suction cups. Those responsible have implemented many ideas and projects for Maintenance 4.0. For example, all machines in the entire plant are equipped with an RFID code and every maintenance technician has a tablet. If defects or irregularities occur on a machine, they can scan the code and call up machine-specific data directly on site.

Project: Optimization of the cable store

Zeis was therefore looking for an alternative - right at the time in summer 2020 when Igus presented a new cable box for its Chainflex range, the Chainflex Case. This is a 50 × 45 × 50 cm box made of corrugated cardboard, in which a specially designed reel allows the cable to be easily unwound, which is supplied by the meter in the desired length. This saves the user shipping costs and ensures fast delivery by parcel service. They can unwind the cable directly from the box. The boxes can also be stacked, making it very easy for the customer to build a block store. The space saving is also a positive factor. Max Herrmann, Regional Product Manager Chainflex: "Our aim when developing the Chainflex Case was to combine the storage and shipping of the cable yard goods and to make handling as simple as possible for our customers." The BSH maintenance engineers were quickly convinced by the concept and planned the complete changeover from the old drum storage system. Together with Max Herrmann and Igus sales consultant Markus Marienfeld, they selected the required cables, which cover a wide range of control, power and bus cables. Maintenance engineer Zeis says: "We were able to reduce the number of variants from 34 to 28 because we were able to reduce costs by eliminating the need for double storage of movable and immovable cables."

Easy handling, fast ordering

Even though the boxes are stackable, BSH has placed them on a shelf. "This has the advantage that we can remove the individual boxes and take them to the machine that needs a new cable. We can now cut the cables to the exact length we need." Igus also supplies every Chainflex variant in any length for the cable box. At BSH, this is usually between 50 and 200 m. As each box is printed with a QR code, identification is easy. This is particularly true for BSH, as Igus has adopted the customer's designation of the cable types in its ordering system. Max Herrmann says: "BSH maintenance technicians order their cables from us online and we automatically convert them." And because the boxes now come by parcel service instead of as drums or pallets, they are delivered quickly and more cost-effectively. Compared to delivery on a pallet by a forwarding agent, up to 84% of the shipping costs can be saved.