Reference article 01/2017
GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
Offering complex silo technology securely with camos and comprehensive configuration rules
OVERVIEW
The camos configuration software for IBAU HAMBURG, a leading supplier of silo, mixing, loading and conveying technology for bulk solids, was to provide sustainability, security and knowledge management. UDS GmbH was brought on board to implement the company's own configuration rules and component relationships - a software partner that IBAU knows well from previous projects. The users are already very enthusiastic during the test phase - and the next rationalization step is foreseeable.
CUSTOMER
IBAU Hamburg
Ingenieurgesellschaft Industriebau mbH
Rödingsmarkt 35
20459 Hamburg
Germany
Phone: 040 / 36 13 09 0
E-Mail: info@ibauhamburg.de
Internet: www.ibauhamburg.de
In 1975, at the height of the energy crisis, the newly founded IBAU HAMBURG brought about a revolution in silo technology: IBAU manufactured silos with a conical bottom, which greatly reduced the energy required for bulk material removal. Today, IBAU HAMBURG is part of the Haver & Boecker Group and is one of the leading suppliers of silo, mixing, loading and conveying technology for bulk materials. Every year, the company sells more than 100 systems all over the world.
Highly complex offers
The number of quotations that need to be written each year is correspondingly high. However, anyone who wants to create a correct quotation must have commercial knowledge, technical expertise, sales skills and in-depth company know-how, as there are an "infinite" number of product variants and a wealth of rules for pricing. The probability of making mistakes is high, but the chance of the whole team learning from mistakes together is low. In view of these challenges, the parent company, Haver & Boecker, introduced software in 2013 that maps the rules for technical configuration and regulations for pricing, thus simplifying the preparation of quotations: camos. With the help of these rules, camos can already determine which system variants are technically possible and at what price during the sales meeting. This enables the sales department to present solution variants that can be realized at the offered price. The software was presented to the Group subsidiaries and IBAU HAMBURG was able to use licenses - but without the IBAU-specific set of rules.
Know-how and creativity
Peter-Alexis Kasten, UDS Managing Director of Software Development and "spiritual father" of IBAU-SLV, and another UDS employee were introduced to the camos programming system. The combination of IT expertise and knowledge of IBAU's systems and requirements gained during SLV development now paid off. In order to correctly and completely represent the relationships between components and parts, the project team included specialists from the engineering department as well as IBAU sales staff. Together with the software experts from UDS GmbH, the structure of the master data and the next steps were defined. The software developers first began to work out the rules for the "Feeding" component group - the group with the highest complexity. They then moved on to the outlet component group, followed by the mixing/transport group. In total, around 30 component groups have to be implemented for camos.
Huge potential after the first tests
Following training in April 2016, Peter-Alexis Kasten's team began programming in May. Haver & Boecker provided group-wide rules such as general terms and conditions, delivery and payment terms, so that UDS GmbH "only" had to take care of the system-related relationships. Selected sales employees tested camos with the UDS rules by creating the quotations manually in parallel and comparing the results. After the first joint test, there were already beaming faces at IBAU: the solution works! camos will be running in a test environment at IBAU until the rules for all component groups for today's silo systems are implemented at the end of 2017. However, the work does not end with the "go live". "The system will probably never be finished," fears Mario Rämmele. "We are always developing new systems and technological innovations."
There's more to it than that
Although the sales department will be able to create quotations more quickly in future, saving time is not the most important criterion for Mario Rämmele: "We are improving our documentation and will be able to find projects more easily in future. But transparency is even more important: quotations will be comparable. And the system supports us with quality and knowledge management. As the sales staff can only select the components that actually fit together, we also have a strong learning effect." The next step will probably not be long in coming: Linking the IBAU-SLV and camos. Then, as soon as a quotation becomes an order, all order information could be transferred to the BOM management system. This ensures that what has been ordered is actually delivered.