Bosch VHIT SpA, recently acquired by the Weifu group, of which the Bosch group holds 14%, operates in the field of vacuum and hydraulics. In particular, it develops, designs and manufactures vacuum pumps for the automotive sector, for which the company represents a center of competence of absolute worldwide importance, hydrostatic drives and volumetric pumps, both for the automotive sector and for tractors and earth-moving machinery. .
About 500 employees are employed in the Offanengo (CR) plant. VHIT supplies the main manufacturers all over the world, including: Peugeot, Citroën, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Daimler, Fiat, Iveco, CNH, Jeep, Chrysler, VM Motori. The Mobility Solutions business sector is the most important of the Bosch Group, with market positioning results that make it one of the leading suppliers in the automotive field in the following business areas: injection systems for internal combustion engines, mobility and related alternative solutions electric propulsion, driver assistance and safety systems, autonomous driving, information and communication technologies between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructures, concepts and services for the aftermarket.
In recent years, VHIT has launched an integrated project to improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes, whose vision is to remove low added value activities, enhancing those of production optimization. For this reason, a path has been undertaken to make machines intelligent, leveraging the data generated during their operation to obtain precise and valuable information in order to increase their productivity. Knowing how many pieces are produced, the execution times or how many anomalous machine stops and their causes, in the day, but also in a month or a year, allows those responsible for industrial processes to determine the factors for a more aware of the machine, to identify trends and make targeted choices to enhance production with the same available resources. Thanks to the use of iProd MOP, whose IoT Tablet version was installed in the 'Prototype' department, VHIT was able to gain awareness of what can be improved with a more targeted use of even the single machine. With a limited investment, excellent process efficiency results are obtained, which can lead to an increase in productivity of a few percentage points. The investment in iProd MOP is thus amortized within a few months thanks to the real-time availability of the IoT operating data of the machines, with which it is possible to implement strategies for creating new business models, such as the "pay per use "Of the production asset, as well as the generation of further added value due to the optimization of production and the various integrated applications (ERP, CRM, WMS, CMMS, energy efficiency, e-procurement, e-commerce, ...) providing an exceptional opportunity for a further and more effective IT integration of production and maintenance processes, significantly accelerating the returns on investment.
VHIT has chosen to use the iProd MOP cloud technology platform for the main features that include:
- planning of production orders,
- automatic monitoring of the progress of orders and production phases,
- dispatch of orders,
- the administration of human and material resources,
- traceability and monitoring of processed parts,
- counting of rejects,
- digital cloud management of part-programs and work cycles in a simple and intuitive way,
- the determination of the total OEE effectiveness index of the single machine or of the entire interconnected workshop,
- the receipt of automatic notifications on maintenance,
- the receipt of purchase suggestions for raw materials, consumables and spare parts thanks to the contextual iProd marketplace,
- the availability of reports on production performance.
The conception of the application, thanks to its accessibility and ease of use, is inspired by the approach that wants to put the operators and the machine at the center of the production process through the possibility of creating a sharing of company knowledge of information that starts from the bottom. The advantage in adopting this technology is not only in favor of the managers of the company, but also to the advantage of machine operators who have the ability to carry out an integral control over their activities, thus being able to demonstrate the results obtained.
Since the beginning of the use of the iProd MOP platform at the VHIT Prototype workshop, a series of immediate advantages have been identified, thanks to which it is possible to proceed with the extension of the solution to the machines used in series production with which could obtain an increase in productivity equal to OEE 7-10%, obtaining an important and rapid return on investment already in the first year of use.
