A production plant is like a body: numerous systems are interconnected, have to work together holistically and constantly provide information. The brain plays a central role, taking in the information, interpreting it and processing it. However, it is precisely this type of networking that can still be improved in many companies and their production facilities. To improve this, a large consumer goods manufacturer relies on the OPRA maintenance solution from DATAGROUP. In combination with Microsoft's BI solution, DATAGROUP's tool helps to keep production facilities and building services running and to interpret the valuable data they provide.
The high quality of its products is central to the consumer goods manufacturer. This is why more than 3,000 employees in production and building services work to maintain the systems, optimize processes and ensure the consistently high quality of the goods. In this area too, the company wanted to consistently move towards the digitalization of processes - away from paper-based workflows and towards smart, digital solutions.
This is precisely where DATAGROUP's OPRA maintenance solution comes in: Production employees receive a mobile application that supports them in their work anywhere in the plant. They can find all important information directly on their tablet: from upcoming maintenance tasks to machine sensor data to the history of the machine, including which maintenance tasks have been carried out in the past. Using this mobile solution and a user-centered interface, the maintenance technician can then quickly and easily feed information back to the system. The time-consuming paper-based documentation is thus replaced by a simple digital solution and the data in the system is always up to date.
OPRA was introduced across the board at the consumer goods manufacturer by DATAGROUP: All areas of the company work with the solution. Processes can thus be optimized across divisions and supported digitally with OPRA. At the same time, the database is comparable across all divisions and regions thanks to standardized definitions and software - an important basis for the cross-plant use of data in maintenance reporting. However, OPRA also simplifies the auditability and certifiability of maintenance processes.
The uniform data basis and the digitalization of processes now enable the company to use this data to gain valuable insights. As one of the world's leading companies with numerous production sites, new data is constantly being added. This means that there are volumes of data that can no longer be efficiently accessed and analyzed in Excel. It was therefore necessary to find a solution with which this data could be easily processed, visualized and analyzed. The decision was made in favor of Microsoft Power BI.
The data is now extracted fully automatically from the SAP-based OPRA solution using CDS views and transferred to the Microsoft Power BI visualization and analysis solution via a web-based SAP gateway. It was important that this transfer did not impair the performance of the SAP system.
With the help of the Microsoft Power BI platform, it is possible to go deeper into the data from a visualized overall view of the production data: from the individual plant to the plant or workstation level. The fact that the key figures follow the same definitions across all areas means that the data can be compared globally. And, because up-to-date data is regularly delivered to Microsoft Power BI, it is also possible to check compliance with KPIs and see at a glance whether the downtime of machines in a particular plant has decreased and, if not, to use the available maintenance data to determine the underlying cause and react accordingly.