Where it started
A machine builder makes plants for the automotive industry. Every plant consists of mechanical and software parts and is configured for the customer. The parts lists for them were largely maintained by hand.
How the bottleneck showed
The more variants there were, the more maintenance work arose. Errors crept in at the handovers between the people involved, and every error had to be found and corrected before a plant could be delivered. Delivery was delayed.
Where it came from
The mechanical and software teams maintained their parts separately. Everything was merged only at the end, by hand. The parts list thus mirrored the split between the two departments, and every coordination between them became a manual step.
What we did
Process
We looked at where in the workflow the parts lists are created and where they are maintained by hand afterwards. We reduced those maintenance steps and integrated the configurator into the existing workflow.
IT
We designed and further developed a variant configurator that brings mechanical and software parts together in one model. The parts lists are generated from it automatically.
What stays
The configurator is part of the normal workflow. Parts lists are created automatically, and the source of errors at the handover between mechanical and software parts is gone.
