Overview

100% system availability and significantly increased productivity in production

Klingspor AG uses top MES

KLINGSPOR AG’s business success is based on a range of over 50,000 items, fast-moving items and customized individual items for industrial grinding applications. The company attaches particular importance to the quality of its products, which are manufactured internationally to uniform quality standards. This makes smooth processes all the more important in order to guarantee availability and short delivery times.

Initial situation

Planning and controlling the conveyor department is a particular challenge at KLINGSPOR, as several conveyor lines and production islands can be used and deployed flexibly. In addition, the production process changes dynamically depending on the production progress and availability of the systems.

Without detailed planning and prompt mapping of production progress, it was very difficult to make statements about quantities and deadlines for products in the production pipeline prior to the project, and it took a great deal of manual effort for the planners to do so. There was also potential for improvement in the material consumption postings, which took place far behind the actual consumption. The labels for labeling the manufactured goods had to be printed in advance in the scheduling department. In addition, data on the performance-related remuneration of employees had to be recorded manually and processed further in the productivity control department.

The standard functions previously used in SAP ERP for order control were no longer sufficient for the company’s requirements, both in the area of setup-optimized detailed planning and production-related order control and processing.

Strategic corporate goals

As part of strategic corporate planning, KLINGSPOR’s production processes should in future be IT-supported and automated wherever possible, starting with planning and throughout the entire production process. Data, information and documents should be recorded in the system or provided by the system directly where they are created or consumed.

Solution

In order to achieve these strategic goals, the IT department decided to introduce top MES. The SAP ERP-integrated solution for the store floor was initially to be implemented as a pilot in the area of assembly line production and then rolled out to other areas of the company.

The SAP-integrated add-on of top flow made it possible to integrate the necessary ERP data and functions into the desired process without any interfaces.

Gabriele Benner, IT application developer, on the decision:
“As we rely entirely on SAP, we were looking for an integrated solution. The price-performance ratio of top MES was just right. The implementation went very smoothly and the cooperation with top flow GmbH was very good. The competence and reliability of the employees were outstanding from the beginning to the end of the project.”

Sequence planning
With the integrated application, the upstream sequence planning for bottleneck machines in the production area could be mapped using SAP tools. The raw strip production process is scheduled in SAP and thus assigns an order sequence. The scheduling determines on which line or island an order is to be produced.

The top MES makes the results of the planning available to the workers at the machines without delay and always based on the one data source, the SAP database, thus providing production data in real time. Within and during the production process, the “pending” orders are now dynamically compiled for each production technology and thus also across the production lines and displayed for the workers.

Order progress
Fixed reporting points in the coil production process are recorded by the workers on the top MES dialog and communicate the order progress directly in the SAP system in the form of feedback documents.

Material consumption
Material consumption is now also conveniently recorded via the touchscreen operation of the top MES. Just like the order confirmations, the SAP goods withdrawals are posted in SAP ERP without an interface and therefore without delay.

Packing process
Label printing, an SAP form, has been integrated into the packing process. The workers now print out the labels themselves on site at the time of packing and as required.

Paperless processes
In principle, the organization has switched from paper to digital information.

Challenges

Inclusion of SAP variant configuration

SAP Variant Configuration is used in this division. In order to be able to map the planning process and provide the information for production execution, extensive changes had to be made to the object dependencies in the BOMs and routings.

Knowledge transfer from employees to the system

The employees’ knowledge of detailed planning on the machines had to be transferred to the system. This was developed in advance in workshops with the employees.

Changes in the process

The confirmation of orders, the booking of material consumption, label printing and the supply of all order information were transferred directly to production.

Employee training

Student assistants supported the workers on site to ensure that these activities could be completed without any problems during productive operation. They had already created the KLINGSPOR-specific user documentation in advance and could therefore be deployed as multipliers and for on-the-job training directly at the top MES terminals on site in production.

Manfred Henzel, Head of Fabrication, summarizes the benefits for KLINGSPOR AG:
“A further step towards a more precise overview of production, shorter delivery times and good transparency in production at a reasonable cost. The simple handling of the system components is particularly pleasing for those employees in production who are a little older.”

The KLINGSPOR AG

Klingspor has been one of the leading manufacturers of high-quality abrasive tools for professional use for over 100 years. The company is the inventor of the high-speed cutting-off wheel (flex wheel) as well as numerous other innovative products in the abrasives industry.

The production facilities manufacture over 50,000 items, including abrasives on backing, cut-off wheels, grinding wheels, abrasive mop discs and abrasive mop wheels for a wide variety of grinding applications.

• Foundation: 1893
• Locations: 36 production and sales locations worldwide
• Employees: 2700 worldwide, Haiger site approx. 500
• Turnover: more than 260 million euros (2014)
• Industry: Sanding technology
• Website: www.klingspor.de

Success Story top MES – Klingspor (PDF)



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Overview