Digital Operator Guidance for 2,500 Product Variants
At its Bad Neustadt site, Ingersoll Rand manufactures around 2,500 product variants, often in small lot sizes and with customer-specific requirements. Previously, employees received the information for a production order primarily in paper form. Order folders containing 20 to 30 pages, additional Excel lists, and historically grown repositories made it difficult to quickly identify the relevant information.
As a pilot project at the Bad Neustadt site, Ingersoll Rand is therefore using SAP Digital Manufacturing to establish integrated digital operator guidance. The goal is to display not more information, but to provide exactly the data needed on the shop floor for each order and work step. io supports the project from process analysis and implementation through further expansion.
Seamlessly Integrating ERP and MES
SAP ERP ECC remains the leading system for customer orders, variant configuration, bills of material, routings, and production orders. Technically released orders are transferred to SAP Digital Manufacturing. There, employees see their product-specific work queue and start the process using the serial number.
The Production Operator Dashboard (POD) provides variant-specific material information, work instructions, reference drawings, process descriptions, and inspection records. The content is filtered by work step: Employees assembling a product receive the information relevant to assembly, rather than information needed later for painting. Once processing is complete, production data is transferred back to SAP ERP ECC.
Key Facts
Client
Ingersoll Rand operates more than 65 production sites worldwide. At the Bad Neustadt site, around 180 employees manufacture primarily side-channel blowers, liquid ring pumps, and customized systems. Around 100,000 products leave the production lines there each year.
Requirements
- Reliably manage around 2,500 product variants and order-specific requirements
- Replace paper-based and distributed information with process-specific operator guidance
- Reliably communicate product and process changes to the shop floor
Solution
- Implementation of SAP Digital Manufacturing in conjunction with SAP ERP ECC
- Digital provision of variant-specific work instructions, drawings, and process data
- Phased go-live during ongoing production
Highlights
- Relevant information for each individual order and work step
- Paperless processes on two assembly lines as well as in painting and packaging
- Pilot project providing the foundation for further expansion at the site and at additional plants
Preparing Data and Expanding the Solution Step by Step
A key prerequisite for the implementation was preparing the existing data. Together, Ingersoll Rand and io analyzed the processes, reviewed master data and variant logic, and consolidated distributed information in SAP.
Shop floor employees were also involved step by step, trained, and able to contribute their feedback to the continued development of the solution. Since the phased go-live, SAP DM has been used productively on two assembly lines as well as in painting and packaging. RFID integration has also gone live. Additional lines, machine integrations, and functions are planned as next steps. This provides a solid foundation at the pilot site for the step-by-step expansion of digital manufacturing.
