Digitalization strategy Document management brings engineering and business together

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The Otto Bihler Maschinenfabrik introduced SAP S4/HANA company-wide in 2019. With an addon, the company now also connects all departments with a uniform document management, thus ensuring shorter paths close to the business process.

Silvia Funke is a freelance specialist journalist from Leipzig.

The Otto Bihler Maschinenfabrik is a traditional family business in Allgäu: For over 70 years, the medium-sized company has been developing innovative automation solutions "made in Germany" for its customers all over the world. With these, the customers produce stamped and bent parts from strip and wire as well as complete assemblies for various industries in a particularly economical way. At the same time, the requirements for efficient manufacturing processes have continually increased, new materials have been added, and material and energy efficiency are playing an increasingly important role. To master these tasks, Bihler employs over 850 people at its two locations in Füssen and Halblech. The machines of the family business, true to the founder's motto "You always have to be the best!", are synonymous with longevity, as they correspond to the worldwide image of local products: "Some Bihler machines remain in operation with our customers for 40 years," reports Alexandra Blümle, head of digital projects at Bihler. Therefore, it is important that colleagues can quickly get an overview of the project in its entire course for optimal maintenance.

Future-proof IT architecture from a single source.

As the company has grown, so has its IT, in part due to various individual developments per department. This was not exactly conducive to transparent knowledge management. As part of a future-oriented digitalization strategy, Bihler aims to create a consistently consistent system architecture throughout the company. A milestone was the introduction of SAP S4/HANA in 2019. "We deliberately left out documents at first to streamline the process, knowing full well that there was a complex task ahead of us," says Alexandra Blümle. The goal was to merge the various sources close to the business process into a SAP document storage system in a revision-proof way.

"We wanted to link the documents with SAP objects and thus prevent double data management," she adds. In a configurable search, both business and manufacturing documents should be transparently and cross-departmentally identifiable in one system. Where the SAP standard required the description of each individual file, the bulk creation with corresponding keywording of documents was another requirement. This is relevant, for example, when saving documents from production. In addition, versioning should be possible. On top of that, as a special machinery manufacturer with lot size 1, Bihler has two large design departments for machinery and tools that work with CAD software. To connect this area with SAP, Bihler uses the SAP add-ons Engineering Control Center (short: ECTR) and Factory Control Center (short: FCTR). They are seamlessly integrated into ERP and are stored as document info sets on the SAP Content Server. This storage as document info sets will now be the central storage type throughout the company.

Implementing company-specific requirements.

The contact with Smart-PLM Aigner was established in 2020 through a project for which the PLM experts were in-house. It was then mentioned that a SAP document management solution was also available in the portfolio. After an online demo that was able to represent the requirements, the customer decided to implement the DMS stage as part of the digitalization strategy with Smart-PLM Documents. "The deciding factors for us were the integration and data continuity in SAP and the goal-oriented work with document info sets. In addition, we were convinced by the openness and willingness to implement further individual requirements," says Alexandra Blümle.

The prerequisite for the introduction was the identification of all document types used in the company: more than 400 were identified and then clustered into 49. They were subdivided into commercial and technical documents, among other things. At the same time, an authorization concept was developed that is controlled via the type of document.

The introduction of Smart-PLM Documents then took place in stages from April to July 2023. "We do not leave our customers alone with the extensive migration of the island solutions and support them with appropriate supplied programs," says Christian Fürstinger, senior SAP consultant at Smart-PLM Aigner. Alexandra Blümle reports on the implementation process: "For this, we had divided our company along the process chain into four groups in order to give the best possible support to the departments." In this manageable framework, it was transparently comprehensible which areas were integrated. "To provide intensive support to our colleagues during the introduction, we had set up a key user concept with a core team. This was also sensible because, in some departments, the changeover involved a change in working methods, such as how a document must be created," says Alexandra Blümle.

Engineering documents accessible company-wide

By now, about 800 colleagues at Bihler are using Smart-PLM Documents. The tool seamlessly integrates an adaptive document management system via the services to the object into the SAP standard. It can be integrated contextually into any document there. The add-on directly connects to the design department at Bihler: “ECTR stores engineering documents in the same way as Smart-PLM Documents. We can build on that and make these available to other areas of the company," says Christian Fürstinger. This also saves other departments the investment in an ECTR license. Moreover, the tool represents master/non-master relationships by, for example, linking a 3D model with the associated 2D drawings. "The SAP document management stores all documents in relation to the corresponding SAP documents: Commercial purchasing documents are thus saved with the corresponding technical documents for the machine and together with the order," explains Christian Fürstinger, "sales documents linked with the project, customer order and delivery, or project overview, project plan and protocols with the associated photos."

The machine number and project number are central within the framework of SAP Document Management at Bihler: From these, it is clear which document belongs to which machine and to which customer. In order for all related files to be found at a glance, they can be stored in a document file for the project, equipment or, for example, supplier. Furthermore, the solution has a subscription and resubmission function, which triggers a notification in case of a change to a document and deadlines can be monitored. The DMS also comes with duplicate detection.

We were able to significantly reduce the search effort in various systems with Smart-PLM Documents.

Alexandra Blümle, Bihler

Shorter processing times, better support, satisfied customers.

"The partnership and goal-oriented cooperation with Smart-PLM Aigner has done our project progress well," says Alexandra Blümle. With the unified document management, it is now possible for colleagues with a few clicks to get a quick overview with all related documents for the maintenance of older machines in use. Last but not least, efficient digital document management at Bihler contributes to meeting delivery deadlines. This reduces processing times, shortens routes, optimizes support and further increases customer satisfaction. "We were able to significantly reduce the search effort in various systems with Smart-PLM Documents. At the same time, our internal maintenance effort has also decreased, as we only have to take care of one company-wide core system," Alexandra Blümle summarizes the optimization potential with the new DMS. The solution optimizes cross-departmental cooperation: "Every employee now finds the document they need."

Next milestone: Digital personnel file.

Documents are like doors in the context of the digitalization strategy. With Smart-PLM Documents, Bihler has brought the keyring into use that opens them company-wide. This allows the traditionally-minded family business to continue its digitalization course in a future-proof manner - away from isolated solutions and towards a core system that connects all areas of the company for more efficient processes. This increases the chances that the Bihler plant, with its technological lead, will still be running after 40 years.

The takeover of old data is still ongoing at Bihler. "There are a lot of documents, the technical integration of which into Smart-PLM Documents is still being prepared and advanced," says Alexandra Blümle. But she already has the next milestone in the digitalization strategy in sight: The HR department has not yet switched to SAP, among other things for data protection reasons. Here, Blümle already has the digital personnel file in mind.