Case Study Trench

The Trench Group is a world leader in the manufacture of high-voltage products. The group encompasses a dozen production sites and sales offices in eight countries and over 3000 employees. At its site in Linz, Trench Austria produces chokes for medium- and high-voltage applications and is a global leader in this niche of the electric energy sector.

Operational Excellence Manager Gerhard Hamberger is responsible for international process improvement and productivity increases in the context of a lean manufacturing initiative of the concern. In his function as head of production of Trench Austria, Hamberger was quick to recognize the value of exact data as the basis for CIP measures; since 1996 he has used the PDC and PAT solutions by Industrie Informatik.

For analysis of significant indicators the company previously exported data to MS Excel for the monthly report. The high effort from preparation to the final report involved some 30 hours monthly and the results bore limited meaningfulness. Thus Hamberger viewed the introduction of a powerful tool for production controlling as essential in order to achieve goals such as production process improvement, higher efficiency in availability, greater effectiveness of production systems and reduced down times.

Perfect interplay between cronetwork and QlikView

After he collected several references, Hamberger opted for the leading Business Intelligence solution QlikView and the Qlik elite partner heldendaten. “Implementation was highly efficient,” reports Hamberger enthusiastically regarding the cooperation. “The consulting team of heldendaten demonstrated great industry expertise and designed the data model in the realm of a joint workshop here on-site.”

QlikView consolidates the relevant data from various data sources to a single application. The data base involves primarily cronetwork PDC and PAT by Industrie Informatik. The cronetwork QlikView Connector lets you select from the provided data and their transfer intervals based on a standardized metamodel that matches order data and schedule data from the SAP^® system. The introduction of QlikView has reduced the effort for producing a monthly analysis to only a few hours.

Dynamic analyses down to the detailed level

“Because we can zoom in down to the individual entry, we can move down to any level and surf through the data without losing our overview.” Hamberger himself says that he makes “data expeditions” to identify potential for more efficient personnel deployment and material flow as well as reduced throughput times.

The benefits of QlikView apply especially in production with the ability to access individual data records of a production cycle. Often the aggregated average figures of a production run fail to indicate problems; the ability to zoom in to details and view individual production orders aids in detecting outliers and visualizes weaknesses such as long setup times.

Uniform view of data

With the new BI application, the staff at Trench has all production indicators at hand. Easily interpretable dynamic dashboards and graphics – period-related or year-to-date, including deviations from planned values – provide conclusive data. Now the results need not be presented with time-consuming effort each month; instead the planning department, the heads of production, the production foremen and the team leaders can analyze their figures themselves and take measures to counter deviations. “All employees now have the same view of data. QlikView’s user friendliness enables intuitive working even without IT skills and long training workshops,” confirms Hamberger. Because data were imported retroactively to QlikView back to 2012, conclusive comparison values are available for past periods.

Trench has tripled its sales and production quantities in the past three years, but the available space at their site in Linz is limited. Therefore their next step will be analyses to make transparent the growing value stream in combination with work progress and materials. The goal is to simplify logistics and material deliveries to reduce space requirements.

photos: © Trench Austria GmbH