More than just software: get to know the faces behind Germanedge! In our series “How the future is created: Our experts in conversation”, we present exclusive insights from our product management team in interview format.
In this interview, we introduce our Product Manager Dominik Heine from the Connected Worker Domain. What is his role and task at Germanedge? Where does his passion for innovative solutions come from? You can also find out what the three key pillars of the Connected Worker portfolio are, why the human factor is particularly important in this domain, what solutions the domain offers for customers and what role the digital factory plays in this.
No time to watch the video with sound? Then just read the transcript:
My name is Dominik Heine. I’ve been the Product Manager for the Connected Worker domain since 2020 and have also been the Product Manager for our marketplace GermanedgeNOW for a few years now.
What challenges does the Connected Worker portfolio solve in digital production?
The Connected Worker portfolio is based on three building blocks. The first building block is the big issue of master data. In a production facility, I have devices, I have machines, I have entire plant parts that I want to manage.
What’s behind it? I want to maintain them regularly. I want to be able to create and manage people. I want to be able to maintain my staff. A big topic: HR, but then it goes even further than normal HR tools, in the direction of qualifications, qualification management and assigning people to jobs. The second building block is, I have the big issue, something happens in my production. It doesn’t always have to be something bad.
It can also be something that just happens during a shift, for example. I have to record that. Compliance is a big issue. Everything has to be recorded so that if something does happen, it can be traced back to see if everything has actually been done to prevent it from happening. So every type of event is recorded and evaluated in the Connected Worker platform.
The third major component is the topic of work management, digital checklists. What do I mean by that? I have various events that happen in production, resulting in tasks, measures, instructions and so on. I have machines that need to be regularly checked and maintained. Regular tasks that need to be carried out. And to ensure that the whole thing works offline, I have our checkware, our digital checklists, which can then be filled out and processed offline.
How does the democratization of data work in the digital factory in connection with Connected Worker?
For us, Connected Worker also means that we always give people a voice and that is what our goal is every time and also when we go into customer contact, here at Connected Worker, we give the employees, the people, a central voice and provide them with all the information from the store floor, from the machines, for example, or from other areas, so that they can work and do their daily work.
And that’s exactly what you said about democratizing data. Depending on the user persona or the job. A shift supervisor needs completely different data, completely different visualizations than, for example, a plant manager or a shift worker.
What advantage does the event bus have for connected workers?
All events that occur in the factory in the digital factory, no matter what, go via the event, are created as an event in the event bus or run via the event bus and I, as a connected worker, can pull out the events that I need and that I want to see, depending on which persona I am.
And that’s where the Connected Worker plays a central role, so that I can see the data, the events that the event bus, the EdgeOne event bus, provides me with.
What advantages does the event bus have over normal messaging for Connected Workers?
Normal messaging is simply messages that are sent back and forth. I put events on the event bus, what happens, what happens specifically and I can intercept them, depending on the filter, for example, enrich certain events again and put them back again.
What is the Unify Production Workplace?
The Unify Production Workplace is basically the front end. Every employee who uses EdgeOne works with it, i.e. every EdgeOne user uses the UPW, the Unify Production Workplace. The UPW combines a wide range of functionalities. Depending on which user persona I log in with, I can then see my data, my menu structures and the information I need to work. For example, a shift supervisor may see completely different dashboards and forms than a plant manager, for example.
How is AI used?
At the moment, if you look back a bit without AI, what does the world look like without AI? The world without AI is: I do everything by hand. I enter all the information that happens by hand. For example, a very specific example: something has happened in the company. I have to record an event that has happened.
I have to select the category of the event. What is the priority of the event? In which plant did the event happen and so on and so forth. I also have to enter the event again using text. The AI can do 90% of this work for you. Yes, I have, I’m sitting somewhere, I see that the event has happened. I speak what happened into a microphone or into my mobile device, for example, and the AI takes over the categorization of where it happened, what priority does it have? Is it a malfunction or just pure information? And the AI does that for you. And that, of course, saves us and companies in particular a lot of time when recording a simple event. And, of course, you can then think further into the various requirements or use cases that play a role in digitization in a company.