Customer

Metalúrgica Fey Ltda. was founded in 1966 and is a family owned company which is located in Indaial, Santa Catarina, in the southern region of Brazil. They are one of the largest manufacturers of fasteners in Brazil with a large production range of fasteners for the automotive and agricultural markets. Offering various production methods with confirmation, machining and surface treatment for their products, they export worldwide.

Challenge

Fey has eliminated a previously diverse application landscape through a thoughtful and structured introduction of a new ERP system. Through the consistent use of this ERP system along all processes and some special applications, the formerly paper-based processes are gradually being digitized. Through this and an extensive connection of the machines to a MES, a large treasure trove of data is available.

The challenge for Fey, based on these successes, is to make the available data actionable for the employees and to approach the next steps of the digital transformation in a structured way.

Approach

Together, experts from I4.0MC and Senai first analyzed Fey’s digital maturity in the areas of equipment, IT applications, organization and culture. The acatech Industry 4.0 Maturity Index was utilized for this purpose. Workshops, process walks and interviews with management and department heads were conducted in order to develop the status quo of the plant in production, maintenance, engineering, planning and scheduling, logistics and quality. Current process flow, procedures, planned projects and pain points were discussed there. In a joint workshop, Fey’s Industrie 4.0 vision and understanding were elaborated to create a foundation for mutual exchange. Based on this, an individual Industrie 4.0 roadmap with concrete and feasible improvement measures that specifically address the different departments, which helped Fey to start directly with their digital transformation.

Results

Together, concrete action items, within a plantwide roadmap, were defined to improve the existing database. This establishes a new way of working that puts the focus on the employee by better providing them with required information at the right time. As a result, management and the shop floor will be able to make data-based decisions supported by IT systems, in their day-to-day business.  Included in these action items was replacing manual KPI reports with dynamic and automated reporting using PowerBI for management. On the shop floor, available data is used to create automated notifications that inform supervisors of relevant process deviations and improve process quality. To make these notifications actionable, employees must have low-threshold access to information and notifications through the use of mobile devices.