Jungheinrich: Data-based product management for the rollout of lithium-ion technology

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From the first electrically powered forklift truck in 1953 to the first series-produced pallet truck with lithium-ion technology in 2011 – Jungheinrich AG is a pioneer in the electrification of intralogistics. In operationalizing lithium-ion technology in its own portfolio, Jungheinrich relies on data analytics from Odego. After all, gut instict is no longer enough to place the technology in such a broad and complex portfolio in an attractive way for the customer and the company. At the VDMA Product Management Conference on 16th April 2024, in Mainz, Andreas Schiller, Head of the Heavy Counterbalance Trucks segment at Jungheinrich, reports on his experiences in this area. “We have made our product management much more efficient and effective, thanks to the data analyses. Evaluations become reproducible, discussions more objective, decisions become justifiable and remain stable.” An important success factor here: “Just get started – even if the database is not yet at the optimum level. This is how we iteratively developed a basis on which we were able to establish data-based product management.”

Anna-Lena Oeck von SMB beim VDMA-Erfa zum Thema "Forecasting bei Losgröße 1"

SMB: Forecasting with batch size 1

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The name SMB stands for special plant engineering with a system and the company lives up to this name, not least with its new modular system. SMB’s business is material handling and covers everything from highly complex automatic storage, palletizing and conveying systems to filling systems. SMB impressively demonstrates how also as a medium-sized special plant manufacturer, modular thinking can be implemented in development and thus significantly increase the use of common parts and reduce construction times. The modeling and visual processing of the variance in Cquenz is particularly important for the team at SMB. This not only creates the basis for communicating and discussing the structure and variance throughout the company, but also makes optimization potential visible. Thanks to Cquenz’s innovative probabilistic simulation process, even companies with small batch sizes can achieve meaningful forecasts of quantities. First orders in the new system prove them right: the plants are a full success!

Viega: Avoiding complexity

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As a manufacturer of installation technology, Viega GmbH & Co. KG supplies solutions for the lifelines of tomorrow’s buildings. A high level of variety, spread across very different unit volumes of integral products, poses a particular challenge for complexity management: internal complexity can hardly be reduced without cutting back on external variety. For Viega, however, it is crucial for success to continue to serve the market with the highly specialized range of a premium manufacturer. At the Complexity Management Conference in Aachen, Jonas Riest impressively demonstrates how Viega masters this balancing act: avoiding complexity right from the start by taking variance into account during the innovation process. To do this, he uses our tools for portfolio analysis and variant evaluation. The data-based approach supports both the identification and evaluation of the right measures among unmanageable quantities of items – and decisions that are supported by everyone. Jonas thus offers a glimpse into the future of complexity management. “Networking data, creating models and deriving insights – these will be the key aspects of variant management in the coming years”, says our lead data analyst Ole Meßerschmidt, summarizing the findings of the two days in Aachen.

Matthias Börner von Syntegon beim Industrieforum 2023 zum Thema "Mit Cquenz skalierbare Maschinen entwickeln

Syntegon: Developing scalable machines with Cquenz

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No product without modularity: At Syntegon, Matthias Börner develops process machines where scalability and flexibility are core to the product idea. To ensure that this succeeds from sales to the supply chain, he has been working continuously model-based in Cquenz since the planning phase – and can thus evaluate variants, costs, configuration, etc. consistently. “The most important thing is the mindset of everyone involved”, he reportes at our Industry Forum 2023. To shape this is possible with the consistent system and Excel evaluations from Cquenz that are tailored to the departments. The achievements of the new way of working have been convincing: “We are now transferring this approach to the other machines in our portfolio.” Thanks to its modularity, the Syntegon XELUM® platform can be scaled to larger batch sizes during the operating phase. And this is a success: well-known pharmaceutical companies on 3 continents are already using the scalable platform.

Philipp Abel & Alexandra Brisch von Eppendorf auf dem Industrieforum 2023 zum Thema "Produkte schneller entwickeln"

Eppendorf: Developing products faster

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In order to serve different application areas in medical technology more efficiently, Eppendorf relies on a common product architecture across the different sizes and product lines of individual product groups. At our Industry Forum, Philipp Abel and Alexandra Brisch shared their experiences: “When setting up the modular structure, it was important to get the entire team on board and deliver tangible progress reports to management. An architecture can quickly become a complex ivory tower that neither the team nor the management understands. In our collaboration with Odego, we achieved a breakthrough using a bottom-up approach that enabled us to get everyone involved”, reports Philipp Abel. “Our Cquenz model is the current basis. To ensure that this is always accessible to everyone, we have set up an architecture overview via the Cquenz Excel interface”, adds Alexandra Brisch. And it works: the new way of working is now receiving a high level of recognition from management and by colleagues.

Stefan Hötzinger at the VDMA Variant Management Conference 2023 in Langen

Scheuch: From fog to cloud

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Scheuch is the market and competence leader in the field of innovative air and environmental technology and offers its customers application-specific and high-quality solutions for their industrial air and environmental issues. As Head of Technology and Product Management, Stefan Hötzinger is leading the ambitious development of a new modular system.

You have been on the path “From fog to cloud” since 2019 – and enjoy high priority in-house. Waht advice would you give to others who would like their modularization project to have a similarly high priority? What was your experience in getting there?

Stefan Hötzinger: I’m sure there are hundreds of ways. I’m happy to talk about mine. Scheuch has developed into an internationally successful company within 50 years. The management continuously develops our strategy, innovation is important and change is deeply rooted in our corporate culture.

Two years after I joined Scheuch, I was put in charge of the research department as well as product management. After many conversations, it became clear: this is a huge spider’s web in which everything is connected – we can no longer make progress with small incremental steps. I realized that it had become somthing bigger. Then I took part in the VDMA’s variant management conference. That encouraged me that we needed to take a more fundamental approach. In the beginning, it was all still very nebulous. Nevertheless, I started to talk about the topic with the management and it started to sink in more and more. And then came the go-ahead for the project.

What led you to decide to tackle the modularization project with Odego rather than alone?

Stefan Hötzinger: We’ve already tried all this several times anyway – the result was pure frustration. And the realization: we will no longer be able to map this in Excel. We need people who can do this on a different level.

In addition to this competence, we need an outside perspective after ther frustrating attempts of the past. There are enough other companies that also deal with this. Why should we reinvent the wheel? We are good at building filters. We develop modular systems faster and better when we learn with others.

It was then impressive to realize how much I can really do with a professional approach from a database that was – in our case – not so clean to begin with. Anyone who tries this with Excel has no idea what an analyst can get out of it. And this is also feasible for small and medium-sized companies. With Odego’s tools, we can evaluate billions of variants in no time at all. And at relatively low cost. Because engineering and manufacturing without this transparency would be many times more expensive.

This is something we can’t do at a click from the start either: developing and maintaining this database is an ongoing task and a lot of work. The people who can do this will be indispensable in the future. Those who have this kind of data can do a lot with it.

What findings from this first project phase can you already pass on to others?

Stefan Hötzinger: The most important thing is certainly to have as broad a team as possible behind the idea. After all, we have to take an entire company with us on a journey that is exciting but can also be scary. It’s not just a new laptop, it’s a real challenge for people. But it’s also a lot of fun to develop something new and ingenious for our customers.

What’s more, at some point you just need the courage to leave gaps. You can’t plan it all out in advance anyway, you have to start with the 80/20 approach. The first modular system is not the end. Of course you will be better and faster with the next one. The important thing is to just get going.

It’s like a journey that you can and should prepare for, but at some point you have to have the courage to set off and discover. The question of purpose will come up at some point anyway. The whole topic is not a sprint, but a marathon… (smiling)… where you have to sprint from time to time.

WAS ambulances: From manufacturing to configuration

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From manufaturing to configuration – is that really possible? How Wietmarscher Ambulanz- und Sonderfahrzeuge GmbH (WAS in short) answered this question and how the team around Product Managers Ulrich Konitzer and Andreas Fafenrot came to implement it in short period of time, they tell us in this interview with Sandra Szech.

WAS is a leading manufacturer of ambulances and special vehicles. Vehicles for customers all over the world are manufactured at the plant in Wietmarschen to meet their individual wishes and specific requirements in the best possible way.

When we met about a year and a half ago, you were facing a major challenge: moving from manufacturing to configuration. What was the deciding factor back then for you to actually make the change?

Andreas Fafenrot: As a company, we strive to be successful – to optimize production, to bring more vehicles into the field and to continuously expand our customer base. However, we have realized that it is mainly the variety of customer requirements that poses challenges for us.

Ulrich Konitzer: Every day, we created new variants that we were unable to master in terms of construction, security and production. The dependencies were constantly becoming a greater challenge, everything was becoming more and more complex. One of the reasons for this is the market: even the basis of the basic vehicle models that we customize has grown immensely in recent years.

And how did you discover that modularization is a key issue for you?

Ulrich Konitzer: When I went through our production facilities, I kept asking myself: why is the implementation one way in one place and completely different in another? The same functions were solved differently, e.g. through different assembly solutions. This is not a requirement from a customer. Why are we doing this and what is the solution? That’s when the idea of modularization emerges.

Today you are a whole step further. The modular system is ready, the configurator is being set up and the organization is being changed accordingly. What were your success factors that enabled you to take the decisive steps in such a short time?

Ulrich Konitzer: It was a great challenge for us to take staff away from the specialized departments in order to devote a large part of our time to the task of modularization. We went so far as to oursource the technical design.

Andreas Fafenrot: This was only possible because we combined the upcoming product revisions with the modularization. In order to achive implementation as quickly as possible, we defined standardization for the specialists and technicians. Standardization made it possible to build up specialized knownledge, which is the basic idea and theory behind the modular system. Thanks to the guidelines, we were able to involve a large group of people in the implementation. Odego Cquenz has enabled us to achieve standardization and modularization.

Ulrich Konitzer: Limiting the variance and reducing the dependencies would not have been possible in this form without the tools and the support of Odego. Not only to invole people from outside. I’ve been involved for many years, but I was able to expand my knowledge of the variety and its effects in the vehicle.

Andreas Fafenrot: Yes, that’s how we achieved precision and structure. In Cquenz, we have streamlined the products. Which variants are needed and which are unnecessary? Where does the variance lead to problems and where does it not? With these findings, it was possible to define concrete specifications for implementation by our external partners.

Ulrich Konitzer: That went all the way to implementation in the configurator. The partner who set up the configurator with us said that he had rarely seen such a well-prepared model.

What presented you with unexpected challenges?

Andreas Fafenrot: During this change, it is challenging to always get everyone on board at the same time. The change in the standardization process has triggered many discussions, devisions made require repeated explanations and an understanding of different points of view.

Ulrich Konitzer: It was clear to us from the beginning that this would happen. For example, contacts from Odego’s customer network also warned us about this. But it still took more effort than we had perhaps expected. We had to promote the new approach internally, and Odego helped us to explain the modular system internally, take feedback from colleagues and also convince the “critics”.

Andreas Fafenrot: In the beginning, the approach is still very abstract for the entire organization. Many colleagues only realize what it really means when it is put into practice. What helps us is a mutual exchange at fixed intervals throughout the entire process.

What advice can you give to other companies that may be at a similar point as you were 2 years ago?

Ulrich Konitzer: I asked myself at the beginning: Is that really possible? Can our product really be modularized? And now I would say that practically any product can be. In my opinion, only large companies that bring in experts can do this on their own. It worked for us because with Odego we have a partner at our side who eliminates “operational blindness”, looks at it from a different perspective, builds a model and knows how to implement something like this. Without this external support, it is difficult to realize this successfully. And: the team must have the ambition and be motivated.

Andreas Fafenrot: It was actually clear to me that it was possible because I had already experienced it in my professional career. Nevertheless, the unbelievable number of articles made me doubt it. A diffuse and detached variety. We had tens of thousands of articles in 48 x 1038 possible combinations – at this point, the data analysis provided useful preliminary work. Showing this with Odego Analytics and recognizing the customers’ usage patterns behind it – that gave me the confidence that we could create equipment variants. And that we can provide sales with a product that allows us to offer our customers the individuality they need in an ambulance. Subsequently, we have developed the configuration model in Cquenz. This will probably always be the step to success: breaking down the product in Cquenz to such an extent that you gain deep and comprehensive knowledge about your product. This is the solution path into the configurator, into procurement and production. For me, the key moment was when we completed the configuration model in Cquenz. That’s when I realized that this is definitely feasible and can be implemented.

Thank you very much, Ulrich and Andreas, for these insights into your key experiences and for allowing us to be part of this success story.