Injection moulder’s portal a success

As proof that not only large companies are successfully employing Internet portals, German mid-size injection moulding machine maker Arburg, has gone live with its online spare parts ordering system – and 10% of its customers are already actively using the system. “Customers can now order their spare parts from us around the clock in German or English,” says Andreas Dummler, Arburg’s head of IT. “The system processes orders immediately, supplies information about their availability and indicates delivery status.” The online ordering system has been up and running for six months now and customers are now able to buy spare parts for their moulding machines (which can be critical to keep their own production lines running) directly through the website. Arburg actually manufactures injection moulding machines for global markets and employs more than 1,900 staff worldwide. Around 1,600 of these work at the manufacturing plant in Lossburg, Germany. The firm’s annual turnover is around 350m euros. The portal is user and password-protected with certain customers able to drill-down further than others depending on their requirements. It’s all based on IBM’s Java-based business process management technology, Websphere. There’s also a DB2 database and Tivoli policy director (for security management) and eServers. “We originally aimed to get 10% of our clients ordering spares online in three to five years, but we’ve achieved this already,” adds Dummler. “We’ve reduced contact time [traditionally via fax or telephone] with customers now. Ordering accuracy has improved because clients can see CAD images of the spare part their ordering.” The success of the portal is its tight integration with other back-end applications. And the time taken to do all this should not be underestimated. Dummler says it took two Arburg staff full-time for nine months (and some help from IBM) to do the integration work associated with the website. He continues: “The company has been working to a five-year IT integration strategy. The portal is just the latest product to come from this.” The firm had to integrate its CAD/CAM and CAE software (Catia) and its home-grown materials management system (based on DB2) with the front-end spares ordering system. And by co-ordinating the use of these tools the company has been able to set up a machine-specific PDM (product data management) system and spare parts catalogue based on another DB2 database. This database is the foundation from which website users can now download the latest product or spare parts data from the stockroom and availability details of the parts required. Dummler sums up the benefits since launch: “We have sites worldwide which can all now view our spare parts stock from one central database [through the portal]. We can therefore respond to local customer orders much faster now, within 24 hours if we need to. “Improving customer service has always been the objective for us. Our clients can now track orders through our factory.”