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 Peter Völz to the Production Domain. What is his role and task at Germanedge? Where does his passion for innovative solutions come from? You can also find out why transparency is so important for companies in production and which production management functions are of great importance for companies.
No time to watch the video with sound? Then just read the transcript:
My name is Peter Völz and I am the Domain Product Manager for Production Management.
What challenges does production management solve in digital production?
Yes, production management is particularly important for transparency within production, i.e. the situation where processes are not exactly recognizable and, for example, bottlenecks and similar problems within production are only identified after a delay. This can be prevented by equipping the digital factory with production management and thus ensuring that you always have an overview of your production.
Which functions in particular lead to success?
There is a whole range of functionalities behind it. The core is basically that we make it possible for our customers to digitize and connect their store floor as easily and comprehensively as possible, giving them the opportunity to use various modules from Production Management. One example would be the evaluation of production figures for KPIs, key performance indicators, which I can then use to make comparisons and verify production measures that I initiate. This means that I am no longer blind and change my production processes in order to optimize them, but can immediately see whether this has an effect and whether it is going in the right direction.
What are the benefits for the customer?
I think an important case is tracking and tracing, i.e. the collection of production data and the status of individual production units, which is very important for traceability and ensures that, for example, in the event of a quality problem, the parts affected by the quality problem can be identified quickly and easily without a great deal of effort. So the classic approach is for someone to run around looking for the pallets with the dubiously manufactured parts and then open up a blocking slip. That’s time-consuming, it takes a while. And in the digital factory I have the opportunity to say okay, I’ve identified that I have a quality problem. I can immediately determine which parts are affected. And those are not processed any further for the time being. And nobody has to walk through production with the blocking slip and look for the parts first.
What are the benefits of the product?
The product has the benefit of creating transparency for customers and enabling the disclosure of all data with intelligent evaluations, which can then lead to efficiency increases.
Is the future with Germanedge on premise or cloud?
Customers are still very much stuck in the on-premise world. But that will change sooner rather than later. The cloud offers a variety of advantages and ensures, for example, that I have the highest conceivable availability to ensure that I can always guarantee my production with the support of the digital factory.
How integrable and future-ready is the product?
We have already supported a wide range of interfaces in the past and, with regard to the cloud in particular, this will of course be expanded even further because interfaces and cloud connections are available here that are independent of what we already provide.
What other areas of application are there for AI?
Yes, AI is a very exciting topic. We have various ideas for integrating it. For example, in data collection, we could support production employees in generating high-quality data when it is collected manually. That’s one possibility, and we also envisage AI-supported evaluations where the problem areas no longer have to be searched for by the analysts themselves, but where the system highlights the deviations even more clearly from the outset and uses AI to ensure that these areas are also identified and presented automatically.
When is the right time to talk to Germanedge if I’m thinking about a production tool?
Yes Immediately, of course. The longer you wait, the more money you end up leaving behind because you can’t leverage the benefits.