Spaleck is active in the recycling industry with modern conveying and separation technology. © Spaleck

To explain: Before the switch to ProAlpha, the commercial and design departments were strictly separated. Today, both worlds are connected via CA-Link. This eliminates a lot of manual transfer work," reports Tenostendarp, "we transfer CAD data from Solid Works to ProAlpha. Conversely, the design department accesses information directly from the ERP, such as project information from the sales department."

Product configurator for contract manufacturing

What the CA-Link module is for design, the product configurator is for contract manufacturing in metalworking and CNC parts production. The range of services extends from lasering, welding, surface processing, CNC machining and large part processing to complete component assembly. "In our subcontract manufacturing, we receive the drawings directly from the customer. We then use the product configurator to create the articles with the production content, more precisely parts lists and work plans, calculate the costs and write the production order directly from the ERP," explains Tenostendarp.

The product configurator supports these processes and, according to the company, makes the creation of articles and quotations faster and more transparent. The module draws the required information directly from the ERP system. This accelerates sales, purchasing and production and should enable short delivery times with high quality at competitive prices. "In times of high market dynamics, this can be crucial," says Sühling: "Contract manufacturing is very process-heavy. Anyone who can no longer meet the increasing demands for speed, transparency, reporting and documentation will disappear from the market. This is another reason why we decided to switch to ProAlpha."

Before the switch to ProAlpha, the commercial and design departments were strictly separated. Today, both worlds are connected via CA-Link. © Spaleck

Advanced Planning & Scheduling

The Production module with Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) was also a decisive factor in the switch to ProAlpha. Today, it is Spaleck's ERP highlight par excellence and serves to optimize production. In order to fully exploit the performance potential of the module, Spaleck has linked its personnel scheduling and time recording from tisoware directly to ProAlpha. The result: "With ProAlpha, we now have a very precise overview of our actual available capacities in order production. This has made our detailed planning much more precise and enables us to communicate reliable delivery dates to our customers," confirms Sühling and emphasizes: "Very few of our competitors can do that."

The successes can also be seen in the figures. For example, in terms of throughput times and adherence to deadlines: "In our rotary order production with an average of over 2,700 running header orders, many used to be regularly behind schedule - in terms of monthly turnover, the rate was around 25 percent. With ProAlpha, the figure is now 5 percent at most!" says Tenostendarp. "One reason for this, and also a special feature in our industry, is that we carry out a full optimization every day with ProAlpha. This enables us to react very quickly and flexibly to deviations from the plan. Ultimately, this has enabled us to bring significantly more calm to production."

Goal: increasingly intelligent data management

Intelligently linked data is the foundation of success. The two companies want to expand this foundation even further. The partners are currently working on feeding tool and processing data from individual machines back into the ERP system. One example illustrates the benefits of this: "On our new laser cutting machine, we process large sheets from which parts for several customer orders are sometimes cut," says Tenostendarp. "In order to make the best possible calculations, we need to know what waste and how much working time has been incurred for each individual order. Today, we only have data on the material costs and the total processing time."

In order to be able to calculate with real actual consumption, detailed machine and processing data must flow into the ERP. This requires an Industry 4.0 infrastructure with interface solutions for real-time data exchange. An interface was developed for this with ProAlpha. Process chains close - business units, departments, employees and partners cooperate faster, more efficiently and more securely. With precisely these goals in mind, Spaleck will soon be using the developed interface and is currently connecting various production machines. It will soon be possible to calculate material costs and times for individual orders even more precisely. "We will take another big step forward in terms of transparency and competitiveness," says Sühling. The goals and targets are ambitious; the company wants to double its turnover within the next ten years.

According to documents from ProAlpha / mho