Germany
Switzerland
Grenzebach Group
Projects
From a small workshop to a global group of companies
Grenzebach has been growing steadily since 1960. What began as a small company with seven employees in Hamlar, Germany, is now a global group of companies with more than 1,600 employees at nine production and development sites in Germany, Romania, the USA, India and China. The company is constantly developing new, innovative production technologies for the glass and building materials industries, as well as future-oriented solutions for intralogistics, process engineering and additive manufacturing processes. Today, around 3,000 Grenzebach systems are installed in 55 countries around the world.
Sector
Industry Plant engineering and process technology
Region
Bavaria, Germany
Company size
1600 employees
Over the decades, Grenzebach's product portfolio and manufacturing methods have changed. As a result, the technical infrastructure for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM) has also changed. Over time, this evolving infrastructure was docked via interfaces to a growing number of new applications. Each of these instances provided a necessary additional function, such as the evaluation and documentation of maintenance parts lists or in the form of a terminology database. At the same time, however, this network made it increasingly difficult to exchange data between different departments within the company and made processes more error-prone. Even updates were becoming more difficult to implement, as there was always the risk that the applications, and ultimately the entire system, would not work after a reboot. At a certain point, it became clear that a new, state-of-the-art software architecture had to be created. This applied to both the technical and commercial sides.
The biggest challenge was that the two existing system platforms had to be replaced at the same time.
An SAP solution was to be used for ERP. For PLM, Grenzebach's management chose PTC Windchill. The biggest challenge:
The two existing system platforms had to be replaced on the same day. It was a tricky task, but one that MAIT's IT and software experts on the PLM side were happy to take on. It was this commitment and MAIT's many years of PTC experience that convinced Franz Bachmeir, Head of PLM at the Grenzebach Group, to work with the company.
Wolfgang Klein, Key Account Manager Business Unit PTC at MAIT, and his team presented the sandbox for the PLM conversion to PTC Windchill as early as January 2021. In this environment, MAIT's main focus in the following weeks and months was on data migration: After checking the data quality, the next step was to transfer the technical data in several test migrations, called 'loops'.
With each loop, the team refined and enhanced the product data, while identifying and resolving system conflicts. Well over 5 million engineering 2D, 3D and PDF drawings, already in digital form, found their way into the new PLM. At the same time, other teams were working on the technical infrastructure for the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
The MAIT Windchill-SAP Gateway was used to transfer data between the two systems. Another important task for MAIT was to untangle the web of docked functions that had grown up over the years, to prune, add and partially reassign some of them to one of the two sides, PLM or ERP. The best example of this is Product Data Management (PDM). In Grenzebach's old IT infrastructure, this central function for managing all relevant product information was still docked to business management. From a practical point of view, however, an interface to Windchill made much more sense. In addition, MAIT needed to re-establish database and process links between Windchill and SAP, including metadata, bills of materials and neutral formats.
However, the MAIT team was responsible for much more than just the technical implementation: the experts ensured that the employees were able to find their way around the new environment and were kept up to date with the latest methods, processes and features through a series of training sessions. In addition, MAIT ensured from the outset that the new system environment would best meet the customer's specific requirements by holding joint workshops with Grenzebach.
"Sandboxes, test systems, training systems and production systems had to be developed, maintained and constantly synchronized in parallel. Throughout this process, MAIT proved to be an incredibly reliable and committed partner."
Closer collaboration between the commercial and technical worlds at Grenzebach has resulted in more intensive data and process synchronization that is faster, more automated and less error-prone. PTC Windchill streamlines collaboration, data management and process automation. In addition, the web-based PLM software is extremely user-friendly. As a result, employees can now manage the product lifecycle with maximum efficiency.
Both new systems went into production worldwide just a few weeks after the start of the test phase. This was due not only to the meticulous work carried out in the preceding months, but also to the fact that the future key users had already received extensive training from MAIT and Grenzebach themselves during the integration process and were well prepared for the big day. Employees from the second major company location in Bad Hersfeld were also involved, as were future core users from the USA and China.
"Sandbox, test, training and production systems had to be developed, maintained and constantly synchronized in parallel. Throughout all this, MAIT proved to be an incredibly reliable and committed partner," says Grenzebach's Franz Bachmeir. Remarkably, Franz Bachmeir and Wolfgang Klein from MAIT are certain that the project was even accelerated by the coronavirus lockdown at the time and the collaboration routines that were adapted to it.
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