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Using online support to optimise the production process
performance.boost by ENGEL accelerates production start at Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst in Romania
Focus on digital products, and not just for urgent service cases. performance.boost by ENGEL also provides support during commissioning and in the on-going process.
The Corona travel restrictions unexpectedly caused headaches for Dirk Horn, Head of Industrial Engineering/Injection Molding at Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst, headquartered in Velbert. A new design for the support bracket of the Mercedes C-Class was already a time-critical ramp-up project in the hottest phase. Huf Teams worldwide were working on this project to fulfill the customer expectations. With support from ENGEL and virtual teamwork, the specialist for locking and authorization systems nevertheless managed to present good parts to the customer within just one week. In addition, the production process was optimised by means of online support.
Saving travel time
Three new moulds from Yantai Huf Tools in China, the group's in-house mould shop, had to pass sample inspection and be put into operation in Romania. This is actually the daily business of the process specialists. "We follow the moulds," Horn explains. "There are times when we spend more than 50 percent of our working time on a plane."
A brand new ENGEL e-victory 400 injection moulding machine with MuCell technology package was in place at the Huf site in Arad, Romania, and ready for the new moulds. But Dirk Horn and his team in Germany have the commissioning know-how and were not allowed to travel. Normally, they are the people who inspect the samples and qualify the moulds on site in Yantai, before accompanying commissioning at the production site and launching the series production process.
Using online support to optimise the production process – We accepted the offer immediately, especially because I know what high quality ENGEL offers in terms of service and processing technology.
Dirk Horn, Head of Industrial Engineering/Injection Molding Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst GmbH & Co. KG
Commissioned in just one week
Covid-19 disrupted this established procedure. The three new moulds were sent to Romania without sample inspection, where commissioning including qualification had to be mastered for the first time without the on-site support of the team from Velbert. However, the production team in Arad was not left to its own devices. "The set-up staff on-site walked through the production floor with their laptops open, streaming a video of what was going on, where challenges still had to be solved, and what the freshly moulded components looked like," reports Christian Muthenthaler, hotline processing engineer at ENGEL's headquarters in Schwertberg, Austria. The third member of the team, Dirk Horn from Velbert, joined in to optimise the production process by means of online support.
Using ENGEL's e-connect.24 remote maintenance tool, both Muthenthaler and Horn were able to track all the machine parameters in real time, give instructions or remotely control the machine directly. The process was ramped up and optimised in this way across three locations. And for all three moulds within just one week. Because the customer, Mercedes, wanted to see good parts in that time frame. "The fact that the online process worked so well overall even surprised us," says Dirk Horn, drawing an extremely positive conclusion. All three moulds were ramped up on time and Mercedes was satisfied with the parts. The support brackets with the new design are now in series production.
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performance.boost
With our new service for process analysis and optimisation, you can identify optimisation potential in your injection moulding processes.
e-connect.24
Connect with our team of process engineers using a secure remote connection in real time to optimise your machine's production settings and process parameters.
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