On our mission to support medium-sized companies in their digitalization efforts, we started an innovation project with Hörmann Group. When Anna Hörmann was introduced to the family business shortly after graduating, it was a great opportunity for the graduate to try something new in the company. Her desire was to support individual divisions with digital services. DPS was a particularly exciting place to start for this, as the strengths of the interdisciplinary team lie in immediate and agile implementation.

Maintenance was slow and expensive

The goal of the joint initiative was to use predictive maintenance to better protect fully automated warehouses against operational failures - and to provide faster solutions in the event of an emergency. System errors can sometimes affect the entire warehouse and cause immense costs if it takes hours or even days to rectify them. Until now, the people who manage the systems on-site first contacted customer service when problems arose, and solutions were sought by verbal descriptions. Too lengthy and too expensive.

The first finding: there is too little data

The team - composed of six international students and guided by the DPS core team - took on the issue and scrutinized the processes on-site at the company. The first conclusion: there was still nowhere near enough data collected to be able to exploit the possibilities of predictive maintenance. How was it possible to achieve greater effectiveness in the processes in question?

An intelligent ticket system with benefits

Within a very short period of time, the team developed a directly applicable ticket system into which customer service errors could be fed using the existing data. Customer service receives appropriate solution suggestions based on successful past solutions. After only a few minutes, technical support calls back with the possible courses of action. Only six months after the project, the tool was integrated into the processes and collected data for future predictive maintenance services, and downtimes in the warehouses were reduced many times over.

What happened since

The project was a success for both sides, and so the appeal to medium-sized companies is once again: don't shy away from digital projects and simply take the first steps! This is also confirmed by Anna Hörmann, who expressly encourages companies to embark on the adventure and open themselves up to the creative ideas of young talents.

Successfully implemented into HÖRMAN’S workflow

At the beginning of 2020, HÖRMANN Digital hired the first development team, which rolled out the developed solution - now called "BugJack" - into the test phase in the same year. Thus, "BugJack" is also the basis for the further digitalization of the service process and the integration of additional functions such as condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. In line with the approach learned, further projects and approaches to digitization are now being developed in various areas of the company.