SPANGLER Software for Industry 4.0

SPANGLER – the Plus of Customer Benefits.

SPANGLER Automation has developed a software system for the more efficient use of machine data for a supplier to the automotive industry. The company produces pressed parts for bodywork construction, in a plant in Hungary amongst other places. The aim was to balance out production figures which were in some cases widely divergent. “To this end, we programmed a software system in accordance with the customer’s requirements, which communicates with the SAP world,” reports the Head of Process Automation at SPANGLER, Thomas Zenk. “Our system receives an order from SAP, communicates the production data such as press strokes and times required for this on the individual machines and feeds the order distribution back to SAP.”

Through this cross-shift and cross-location data collection , Thomas Zenk and his team have made their work transparent and thus optimised the utilisation of the entire plant’s capacity. As soon as large discrepancies are visible and the system detects errors, the shift supervisor is informed immediately by e-mail or text message . If all the company’s sites are integrated, decisions on process optimisation can also be made at the headquarters on the basis of this data.

Targeted use of new findings
SPANGLER has implemented the requirements through VB.net programming with the visualisation on the respective machine, via 15 inch Phoenix touch panels.  The new development was created in close coordination with the customer. “On the basis of a specification sheet, we have shared views on all the additional functions that appear sensible and feasible in view of our experiences,” reports Thomas Zenk.  In this way, a system was created, “with which SPANGLER has made a decisive step towards automated production control and thus towards Industry 4.0″.