Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer transfers management of Spangler GmbH to the next generation.
With mixed feelings Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer retires as managing director. She has built up, accompanied and led Spangler from a three-person operation to an internationally active company with 150 employees.

After her brother Helmut Graspointner left the company at the end of 2019, the founding generation now ultimately passes on the baton of the management to the following generation.
‘I will miss the people’, Spangler-Schäfer explains the change, and with people she means all those who have influenced her everyday life up to now: the employees, the customers, the suppliers.
Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer has always met them with appreciation and with this attitude she laid the foundation for the continuous success of her company. Thus, the connection to customers and suppliers are based on a long-term cooperation and the concerns and welfare of her employees have always been important for her. ‘We are a family-run company and our employees are members of the business family.’

Cohesion in the event of a crisis

Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer is the one who knows best what support means. ‘When I took over the management together with my brother after the sudden death of my husband Franz Spangler in 2003, the backing was the base for surviving – both in the family and in the company.’ The past twelve months now have shown again how precious mutual reliability is under difficult conditions. ‘Like a chain we have defied the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic together and managed to come through troubled waters with our company’, she describes with gratitude.

Exactly for this reason and considering the background of a well-established management team, Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer can calmly hand over the reins. The future management consists of Tina Lambert (born Spangler) and Christian Brandmüller. All other members of the extended management team with the department managers have been part of Spangler and are well known for many years or even decades. Although current times did not leave room for a dignified farewell, the employees used the existing possibilities at the best. In several separate events the employees and the management remembered common times.

The employees handed over a photo album to their ‘boss‘ for her farewell, full of memories of more than thirty years.
Another emotional moment for Spangler-Schäfer was when she got a second gift – a ‘forget-me-not’ wooden bench should remind the managing director of the employees . ‘The bench will get a special place in my garden‘, Spangler-Schäfer promised. She, too, did not miss the opportunity to give something back to the employees: completely Corona-compliant, she had baked muffins for all em-ployees. As it should be for a business family.

Plans for the future

And what is Hannelore Spangler-Schäfer doing now? Of course, she will be in the company for some hours, but she will have enough time for trips, bicycling or hiking. ‘The biggest gift for me is that I can shape my daily routine on my own’, she says modestly and humbly. She has always kept humility during her business life – despite all successes or perhaps precisely for that reason.

A large dairy in the North of Germany, which is specialized in long-life dairy products, concluded the expansion of the production site with a tower for the milk powder production at the beginning of 2021.
This significant enlargement made an extension of the sewage treatment plant by filtering and cooling of the wastewater indispensable. We were commissioned by HUBER SE to carry out the construction of the control cabinet for the sewage treatment plant, as well as programming, cabling and start-up.

Official regulations determine the wastewater process

The wastewater that results from the production processes must be treated in several steps. After the biological cleaning, dissolved pollutants and phosphate residues are separated from the liquid substances in a HDF dissolved air flotation plant by HUBER SE. Then the temperature is extracted from the filtered water by a RoWin wastewater heat exchanger. The cooling process is especially important, as the cleaned water is lead in a nearby stream (receiving water). Official regulations determine that the temperature of the stream must not be increased by more than 1.5° degrees after the water was led in. The residual sewage sludge from the filtering processes of the HDF and the other sludges from the biological cleaning are dewatered and disposed after a digestion process in a Q-Press®.

The control systems by Spangler Automation provide a professional control of the sewage treatment plants and cooling plants. Besides the assembly and the cabling of the switch units, three PLC Siemens S7 were programmed and integrated in the existing and established control system of the customer. Special attention was paid on the strict implementation rules, which had to be met accurately for any work on the hardware and software. Via Siemens WinCC the plants are now controlled directly via the touch displays in the production rooms or via the control centre. In order to continuously ensure the high quality of execution, Spangler Automation took over the complete electrical installation of the plants. Particularly challenging was the welded design of the stainless steel cable channels and hose system of the pneumatic valve cluster.

The start-up of the plant was unproblematic and to the fullest satisfaction of our customer Huber SE and its end customer. The additional installations are currently being completed and are scheduled for launch in 2021.

We look back on our first online live lecture on the subject of ‘Virtual start-up‘ with great satisfaction. We decided to go this electronic way as the long-lasting Corona restrictions have made it difficult to visit our customers. Martin Müller and Robert Heislbetz gave a presentation to the nearly 30 connected customers via webinar. The focus was on the numerous additional benefits that can be realized with a virtual start-up.

Virtuality brings real added value

In the webinar the project planning of a digital twin for plants as well as the advantages of the virtual start-up were explained. The main focus was on the testing phase between PLC control and systems engineering which can be carried out even before the assembly of the plant. This enables early detection of conspicuous features and early optimisation of process procedures. Furthermore, the experts went into detail as regards the possibility to reproduce control processes as well as safety programmes like for example safety interlocks and shutdown matrices, via the real time capable core of the simulation computer. Requirements, which result from a functional specification sheet and may arise only months after start-up, can also be shown in that way.

From theory to practice

By means of a customer’s project from the automobile sector, the experience and the suitability for daily use were shown. In this case it is a retrofit of an existing plant with three big production lines for the galvanisation technology.

The plant was to be equipped with a new control technology and connected with the ERP system, without shutting down the whole plant and with minimum standstill time. Taking this into consideration, Spangler offered a line-for-line retrofit, planned and simulated before by a virtual start-up. For the implementation, a detailed ‚digital twin‘ was designed. The simulations were connected to a failsafe PLC in order to realistically reconstruct production conditions. Thus, the process sequence could be tested thoroughly and adjusted accordingly. Even before the physical start-up, optimisation of the plant process and training of the operators took place. The result was a successful retrofit with a minimum start-up period as required by the customer.

Martin Müller, Sales Manager, sums up the primary additional benefit of the virtual start-up: ‚We achieve a calculable competitive advantage for our customers due to increased planning and project planning reliability as well as due to clearly reduced costs for resources and personnel. Because of the early planning optimisation of the processes not only a smaller time frame for the start-up is required, but also the base for long-term stable production is created. We see a clear potential for the future. This is the reason why we will continue to invest in this service for our customers.

If you wish further information or if you would like to participate at our next live presentation, please do not hesitate to contact us: sales@spangler-automation.de

The SPANGLER Versiontool is a programme, completely developed in-house, to access quickly and targeted the corresponding project files during and after the creation phase of software projects. A structured filing, a well-arranged status maintenance and a clear version archive have enabled us since then a transparent administration of our projects.

In the beginning was the idea

Versiontool has its origin in the context of the company-owned innovation management. An employee presented a suggestion for improvement for a programme for structuring the filing of software projects. The idea was to remove the breeding ground for potential faults by avoiding overlaps, untransparent archiving or faulty information flows. Based on this, the SPANGLER Versiontool was created.

The programme works like a digital file. This can, similar to its real counterpart, be removed and the included documents can be viewed chronologically. During this time the project is ‘checked out’ for other users, so that no overlaps can occur. The integrated user administration provides a secure handling of sensitive customer data with which administration rights such as read or edit permission are assigned. In case the ‘file’ is open, version history, working steps, persons involved or current status in real time are presented. This saves users from long search histories, avoids additional work and simplifies further working steps. Versiontool is not only limited to files which usually are used for software projects but is also used for universal applications. The administration of wiring diagrams and lists of data points in the creation process of the Spangler control units are only two of many other application possibilities.

In use by us and our customers

For many years we at Spangler have been using exclusively Versiontool for the administration of our projects in process automation and we have continuously improved and extended it over the years. We could convince various customers of the advantages of the programme. Among other things, they implemented it for software management of production machines, bus systems of the building installation and safety engineering.

„What makes our Versiontool stand out against similar products“ says Thomas Zenk, Manager Process Automation and authorised representative at Spangler GmbH, „is, besides the cost-benefit factor, mainly our flexibility. Our programmers can consider customer requirements and can adapt the software individually. In this way we enable the best possible integration in consisting software surroundings or in the corporate networks of our customers.“

In addition to the clearly arranged presentation and the quick acquisition of information, Versiontool allows improvement of quality by efficient and perfectly coordinated work. A significant advantage which we are glad to share with our customers.

Would you like a free live demonstration without obligation?
Please do not hesitate to contact us by e-mail: sales@spangler-automation.de