Reference Customer | Case Study

TWE Dierdorf GmbH & Co. KG, a non-woven fabric manufacturer based in the Westerwald region, relies on the GS-Service operational management system and the GS-WEB mobile solution for its maintenance operations.

Reference Customer | TWE Dierdorf GmbH & Co. KG

The principle of simplicity

Increased plant availability, higher production output and optimised product quality. With these three cornerstones of increased productivityin mind, TWE Drierdorf GmbH & Co. KG has been relying on maintenance management using the GS-Service operations management system from GreenGate AG (Windeck/D – Seengen/CH) since 2006. TWE, a manufacturer of high-quality non-woven fabrics, has used the market-leading IT solution for maintenance and operations management to make the transition from corrective, failure-oriented maintenance to preventive maintenance. TWE is unlocking new scope for action through real-time information and agile handling via mobile devices with the flagship product in the GreenGate portfolio: the mobile maintenance solution GS-Web.

Key facts from the case study: GS-Service in action at TWE Dierdorf GmbH & Co. KG

Sector: Non-woven fabrics

Software used:

GS-Service – GS-Manager; GS-Web, OPC UA interface (linking PLS and GS-Service)

Processes supported:

Planung, Steuerung und Dokumentation von Wartungs- und Instandhaltungsaufgaben
Terminierung von Inspektionen, Wartungen und Betriebsmittelprüfungen
Integration von Messgeräten für Maschinenzustandsüberwachung (Stoßimpuls- und Schwingungsmessung)
Mobile Arbeitsauftragsbearbeitung via GS-Touch, inkl. Rückmeldung vor Ort
Mangelerfassung, Terminverschiebungen und eigenständige Bearbeitung am Objekt
Zentrale Verwaltung von Stammdaten zu Anlagen, Betriebsmitteln und Equipments
Erstellung von Auswertungen, Berichten und Audit-Dokumentationen
Unterstützung von gesetzlich vorgeschriebenen Prüfungen (Hebezeuge, Leitern, Messmittelkalibrierung)

Challenge:

High standards of safety, health and environmental protection in chemical production
Complex and sprawling process plants with significant travel times
Previously inefficient stand-alone solutions and paper-based processes
The need to manage maintenance and repair tasks efficiently and utilise resources optimally
Ensuring valid data for audits and regulatory requirements
Coordination with partner companies on the plant site, some of which still use paper-based processes

Procedure:

Digital recording of infrastructure and equipment in GS-Service, inventory and analysis of operational processes (including health and safety), concept development with alignment and harmonisation of analogue and virtual workflows, test set-ups, training, go-live

Result:

Efficient, seamless management of maintenance, repairs and equipment inspections
Significant reduction in travel times and faster on-site response times
Transparent documentation and a reliable database for audits and compliance
Improved planning and utilisation of maintenance resources
High user acceptance thanks to the intuitive user interfaces of GS-Service and GS-Touch
Integration of mobile devices enables paperless workflows within the plant’s own areas, with real-time feedback on tasks and defects
Foundation for continuous process optimisation and safe, cost-effective plant management

smart nonwoven solutions

The TWE Group (smart nonwoven solutions), with its twelve production sites across Europe, Asia and the USA, can look back on a history spanning over 100 years. With over 1,400 employees across the group, the TWE Group develops, manufactures and markets a wide range of innovative nonwoven solutions for virtually every application, using high-quality raw materials and state-of-the-art production technologies. Total turnover currently stands at over 350 million euros. Many years of experience and reliable continuity have transformed the family-owned business, founded in 1912, into a globally active group of companies that has now secured a firm place amongst the top 10 in the nonwovens industry. Its renowned customers are found in the hygiene, medical, automotive, filtration, household cleaning, clothing and building materials sectors. Whether in hygiene products or nappies, in filter systems or as lining materials in furniture and leather goods, as dressing materials or as part of car trim: non-woven fabrics – also known in technical jargon as ‘non-woven textile structures’ – are used in almost every industry and are therefore an important component of a wide variety of end products in everyday life.

Immense scale – technological diversity

The TWE site in Dierdorf is one of the key plants within the TWE Group – a glance inside the Westerwälde production facility reveals the full complexity of the manufacturing process. Because not all non-woven fabrics are the same – and depending on the application, they may be required to be fire-resistant or malleable, lightfast or conductive, thick or thin, in wide or narrow webs – sheer scale meets technological diversity in Dierdorf.

Production lines up to 100 metres long and four metres wide are partly made up of units from severalplant manufacturers, with TWE collaborating with suppliers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the USA. Analogue plant units are coupled with digital ones – achieving excellent machine availability whilst keeping maintenance costs low is a real challenge for the electrical workshop, the metalworking shop and the Technical Service department at TWE in Dierdorf.

“We use GS-Service as a comprehensive database where documents can also be consulted for fault analysis; information is also passed on to other shifts via GS-Service. During external audits, GS-Service enables us to provide a complete record of maintenance logs, including both text and images.”

Mario Eisen
Electrical Engineer, Process Development at TWE Dierdorf GmbH & Co. KG

Strategy switch with GS Service

Mario Eisen (48), Head of Electrical Maintenance at TWE in Dierdorf and also a member of the Process and Project department, recalls the days of so-called corrective maintenance, with repairs carried out only after a failure occurred: “Before GS-Service was introduced, we mostly ran equipment ‘until it broke.’ Fixed maintenance days were a rarity.” Unplanned downtime, unpredictable maintenance workload, and the search for backup equipment are only part of the problem. Aspects such as energy and material efficiency, tracking maintenance effort by person/department, and documentation are also success-critical factors of modern manufacturing — factors that TWE Dierdorf now addresses through the use of GS-Service. With the GS-Service maintenance system,” says Mario Eisen, “all equipment is recorded, and as part of preventive care, corresponding maintenance and inspection intervals are defined and monitored to ensure operational readiness and energy-efficient operation. Specifically, comprehensive fault management, planned maintenance and servicing are all handled via GS-Service.” This also documents the activities carried out; in addition, operating equipment is recorded (including forklifts, with their forklift inspections), as well as occupational safety data such as a first-aid kit register and a near-miss register. This varied use illustrates the comprehensive functionality of GreenGate’s maintenance solution: as a system positioned downstream of the ERP, GS-Service integrates planning, documentation and monitoring functions together with business management applications into a single information and management system. The object-oriented software — designed as a scalable client/server solution — is built on standard technology and runs on current Microsoft operating systems. Thanks to its open system architecture, GS-Service can be linked to other systems (GIS, DMS, PLM, CRM, PLS, PLC, ERP) — TWE in Dierdorf uses SAP. Incidentally, for better performance, TWE in Dierdorf recently made a switch: the database, the core GS-Service application, and the new mobile solution GS-Web are now hosted on separate servers.

Growing with the challenges

Sixteen years after implementation, Mario Eisen – a power user from the very beginning – has established the ‘principle of simplicity’ as best practice within the company. Everyone must be able to work with GS-Service easily, with the tasks assigned being intuitively clear to everyone. This applies both to the way maintenance activities are carried out and to their documentation. “It must be self-explanatory what needs to be entered.” TWE places a strong emphasis on using photographs to document defects and faults. This makes internal processes more efficient because they are more effective – though when it comes to documentation, Mario Eisen looks beyond the factory gates: “During external audits, we can use GS-Service to provide complete maintenance records in both text and images.” In times when not only independent testing bodies and certifiers, but also clients – particularly from the automotive, hygiene and medical technology sectors – impose strict standards on suppliers that extend right through to production, this is an invaluable advantage. Mario Eisen emphasises: “We have therefore been able to grow alongside our challenges, partly because we could rely on valid documentation within the GS system.” The electrical workshop, metalworking shop and technical service department at TWE Dierdorf use GS-Service as “a large database where documents can also be consulted for fault analysis,” explains Mario Eisen, “and information is also passed on to other shifts via GS-Service.”

Usage in figures

100 metres

long and 4 metres wide – these are the maximum dimensions of the production lines at non-woven fabric manufacturer TWE Dierdorf GmbH & Co. KG, some of which are made up of units supplied by several plant manufacturers.

TWE employs

1,400 staff across twelve production sites in Europe, Asia and the USA. The company, whose core expertise lies in ‘smart nonwoven solutions’, has a history stretching back over 100 years.

350 million

TWE generates this total turnover across the group – at its Dierdorf site in the Westerwald region, the GS-Service software has been in use for maintenance and operations management since 2006. Users: electrical workshop, metalworking shop and technical services.

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GS-Service as an information hub

This is because GS-Service offers various standards (tasks, events, stock/budget variances) for providing targeted information via the notification service, which has proved its worth in TWE’s three-shift operation: events are recorded in GS-Service and, for each shift, an event report is generated and filed using a simple application in Microsoft Excel. The application also generates the necessary entries for the notification service in the database. The notification service processes the database entries at the end of each shift and ensures that the report is sent by email. Furthermore, GS-Service alerts the TWE team across shifts to scheduled internal and external maintenance tasks.

One advantage is that GS-Service already contains predefined tasks for various types of incidents, which take established solution strategies into account. Tasks are therefore generated on the basis of which the required personnel can be allocated according to their qualifications and availability, as well as the necessary resources (equipment / spare parts). As a central data pool, GS-Service not only records the processing and evaluation of maintenance tasks at TWE, but also “the hours worked by tradespeople”, according to Mario Eisen. The data on duration reported in the work order form can therefore be used for cost centre-based cost calculation.

The new maintenance strategy implemented with GS-Service is, moreover, a key component of the ‘continuous improvement’ principle at the TWE plant in Dierdorf. Mario Eisen explains: ‘Our products and processes are regularly monitored and controlled. Deviations are compared with the target values through continuous measurement or auditing. Where deviations occur, appropriate corrective and preventative actions are initiated. Particular attention is paid to recurring errors, which are analysed in detail to identify their causes and rectified through appropriate measures. The effectiveness of these measures is monitored and ensured through appropriate checks.”

‘The trick is to keep it simple. As a rule, this only works if you know what the other person wants and needs. For example, someone who is out and about solely to identify faults won’t have any other checklists or information displayed on their tablet. And GS-Web makes it wonderfully easy to create a role-based interface.’

Martin Gerwens, Member of the Executive Board, GreenGate AG

Highly mobile with GS-Web

This, too, is typical of TWE: the philosophy of continuous optimization includes the ambition to consistently adopt new technology in maintenance and production wherever it makes day-to-day work practices more transparent and more resilient. In the foreseeable future, TWE will address limiting factors such as tacit knowledge, time and space — all of which affect the efficiency of a task — with GS-Web. GS-Web is the browser-based application (intranet/internet) for viewing, editing and analyzing content from the GS system. Maintenance technicians visit a website, log in and get started based on their assigned tasks. The new software addresses various stakeholders within the company, including management, through the ability to use dashboards. Dashboards are the “speedometers” (KPIs) of maintenance — they present metrics on maintenance processes, faults, failures, etc. in graphical form. “It’s a huge advantage,” says GreenGate board member Martin Gerwens, “that TWE has already built a solid foundation with GS-Service, and can now move up into a different league with GS-Web. The primary goal here is to capture events — that is, faults — directly at the machine via smartphone or tablet, rather than only later at a terminal in the foreman’s office. This also makes sound controlling and essentially real-time control possible.”Particularly when it comes to presenting unplanned events on important machines quickly, transparently and clearly, the reporting function in GS-Web really shows its strengths.
Of course, the notification service – which has been fully operational to date and functions as a sort of shift log via email and Excel – can also be switched over in due course to the simpler and less labour-intensive web technology. Martin Gerwens goes on to explain: “The trick is to keep it simple. As a rule, this only works if you know what the other person wants and needs. For example, someone who is exclusively out and about to record defects won’t have any other checklists or information sent to their tablet. And a role-based interface can be implemented wonderfully easily with GS-Web.” Mario Eisen also sees GS-Web as a data transfer tool for production staff at TWE in Dierdorf: “They, too, can feed data into the system, for example, when it comes to the tasks they have carried out, such as cleaning specific units.”

From barcodes to sensor technology

What is suitable for optimisation and what is not – TWE certainly has its own ideas on this matter. GS-Service, for example, was implemented and fine-tuned almost entirely independently by TWE following training in in-house seminars run by GreenGate. GreenGate supported the flexible integration of the software with assistance as required: “Fast service, knowledgeable staff, solution-oriented collaboration,” states Mario Eisen, who is driving forward further new digitalisation solutions within the company. TWE has already implemented the fitting of barcodes on machines and equipment, which colleagues can scan to access the right information in the system at the right time and in the right context. And, where necessary, to enrich the corresponding ‘reference number’ in the system with new data. This makes the organisation as a whole more capable of automation. It is clear, however, that the barcodes primarily serve to uniquely identify the machine and to enable faster, more efficient handling of maintenance tasks.
A further boost in efficiency is expected from another measure currently under discussion, which is intended to link the GS-Service IT maintenance system even more closely with the machinery. Via the OPC UA interface, TWE is able to respond to events at an early stage. How it works: Sensors or operators – as required – monitor machine conditions; this information is sent to the PLS and, via OPC UA, to the GS-Service maintenance system. There, the information is converted into maintenance and repair orders, which are automatically sent to the maintenance team or machine operators’ tablets.

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