Contemporary tool for sales in the office and in the field

With CREALIS® 3D, Haas Schleifmaschinen GmbH is using an innovative, sales-oriented product configurator with 3D presentation option of the configuration including zoom and rotation effects in real time.

CREALIS Cloud

Haas Schleifmaschinen GmbH

For more than 85 years, Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen GmbH has been deve­lo­ping, pro­du­cing and dis­tri­bu­ting uni­ver­sal grin­ding machi­nes, hand­ling sys­tems and the Mul­tig­rind® Hori­zon grin­ding soft­ware. Cus­to­mers include well-known tool manu­fac­tu­r­ers, metal­wor­king com­pa­nies, the auto­mo­ti­ve indus­try, aero­space and medi­cal tech­no­lo­gy. More than 60 per cent of the pro­ducts and pro­ces­ses are less than three years old. This “New Pro­duct Ratio” illus­tra­tes the importance that Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen atta­ches to rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment.

THE TASK

Com­ple­te quo­te gene­ra­ti­on with visua­li­sa­ti­on and pri­cing as well as ensu­ring tech­ni­cal fea­si­bi­li­ty The deve­lo­p­ment of the first uni­ver­sal grin­ding machi­ne at Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen GmbH laid the foun­da­ti­on for the ver­sa­ti­li­ty of the Mul­tig­rind® series. Con­sis­tent atten­ti­on was paid to stan­dar­di­sing the com­pon­ents from the smal­lest to the lar­gest machi­ne based on the modu­lar prin­ci­ple. The cur­rent quo­te gene­ra­ti­on pro­cess works well, but for com­pre­hen­si­ve glo­bal digi­ta­li­sa­ti­on, they wan­ted some­thing more con­tem­po­ra­ry that would make them fit for the future. In order to pro­vi­de the sales office and field ser­vice with a tool, tho­se respon­si­ble were on the loo­kout for a sui­ta­ble pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor.

THE PROCESS

One decis­i­on cri­ter­ion was the 3D pre­sen­ta­ti­on pos­si­bi­li­ty of con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on in real time After exten­si­ve rese­arch, Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen opted for CREALIS® CPQ from ORISA. With the aid of 3D inte­gra­ti­on, cus­to­mi­sed pro­duct design can be tra­cked during con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on through screen split­ting. As a result of an initi­al detail­ed mee­ting, a well-foun­ded solu­ti­on con­cept was deve­lo­ped and the ‘pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on’ pro­ject at Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen star­ted imme­dia­te­ly after the com­ple­ti­on of the requi­re­ment spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­on at the end of Novem­ber 2017. Pre­vious trai­ning on the CREALIS® PDM enab­led two Haas employees invol­ved to model the grin­ding machi­nes. The models can thus be deve­lo­ped and main­tai­ned inde­pendent­ly of the soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rer. ORISA took on the task of set­ting up the neces­sa­ry bidi­rec­tion­al inter­faces within the IT infra­struc­tu­re at Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen. The pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor was available as an online and off­line ver­si­on in time for the “Grind­Tec” trade fair in March 2018. The pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on of the smal­lest grin­ding machi­ne, the Mul­tig­rind® CU, could thus be pre­sen­ted to the trade fair audi­ence. The app­re­cia­ti­ve respon­se from the visi­tors encou­ra­ged tho­se in char­ge that they had have made the right decis­i­on.

A. Haas Maschine

THE OUTCOME

Grea­test pos­si­ble effi­ci­en­cy, func­tion­a­li­ty and fle­xi­bi­li­ty in the gene­ra­ti­on of quo­te A web-based solu­ti­on was crea­ted on the basis of ORISA’s CREALIS® con­fi­gu­ra­tor. It includes the grea­test pos­si­ble effi­ci­en­cy, func­tion­a­li­ty and fle­xi­bi­li­ty in the gene­ra­ti­on of quo­tes, inclu­ding fea­si­bi­li­ty checks through to parts list reso­lu­ti­on and 3D visua­li­sa­ti­on. In prin­ci­ple, the con­fi­gu­ra­tor is cal­led up from the CRM sys­tem so that the respec­ti­ve cus­to­mer data is available. If a con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on con­cludes with the crea­ti­on of an asso­cia­ted parts list, this is used for pri­cing and deter­mi­ning the deli­very time from the rele­vant plan­ned times in the ERP sys­tem. Final­ly, the CRM sys­tem deli­vers a bin­ding quo­te to which data sheets, tech­ni­cal dra­wings, manu­als and over­views of access­ories can be added. All lay­outs can be cus­to­mi­sed and expor­ted online via web ser­vice in CSV for­mat. Imme­dia­te­ly after the suc­cess of the con­fi­gu­ra­tor at the trade fair, model­ling of the Multigrind®-CA, Multigrind®-CB and Multigrind®-CU machi­nes could begin. Fur­ther­mo­re, Haas Schleifmaschinen’s desi­re to also have an off­line ver­si­on was imple­men­ted. The sole pur­po­se of this is to cle­ar­ly con­fi­gu­re a Haas grin­ding machi­ne for the inte­res­ted par­ty and to explain tech­ni­cal details and spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons in a com­pre­hen­si­ble man­ner. In order to always be up to date, we recom­mend regu­lar syn­chro­ni­sa­ti­on of the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on data with the data of the online con­fi­gu­ra­tor. The respec­ti­ve off­line ver­si­on retrie­ved is valid for 30 days.

THE OUTLOOK

Fur­ther deve­lo­p­ments towards an ‘After Sales Con­fi­gu­ra­tor’ are being sug­gested Simi­lar to the machi­ne con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on, the busi­ness with addi­tio­nal pro­ducts such as grin­ding wheels, clam­ping devices and sys­tem exten­si­ons, e.g. robot con­nec­tions, is also to be made more effi­ci­ent in the future. Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen came up with the idea of deve­lo­ping an ‘After Sales Con­fi­gu­ra­tor’. The struc­tu­ring alre­a­dy pre­sent in the con­fi­gu­ra­tor model is going to be reu­sed in the pro­cess of fin­ding and defi­ning the right addi­tio­nal com­pon­ents. As an export from the­se con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons, not one-dimen­sio­nal parts lists but rela­ted sub­s­truc­tures are available for the ERP sys­tem.

With regard to the con­side­ra­ti­on of spe­cial requests for a grin­ding machi­ne, plans are in place to intro­du­ce ‘Spe­cial item manage­ment’. To gua­ran­tee an appro­pria­te work­flow, it is important to invol­ve the desi­gners to a grea­ter dimen­si­on.

The CREALIS® pro­duct con­fi­gu­ra­tor is com­pa­ti­ble with all com­mon brow­sers and mobi­le devices per se. Thus, it is only a mat­ter of time befo­re increased mobi­le use great­ly redu­ces respon­se times in the quo­te pro­cess.

Our expec­ta­ti­ons were more than ful­fil­led. This can be seen through the suc­ces­si­ve intro­duc­tion of con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on for all pro­duct are­as and the inclu­si­on of addi­tio­nal opti­mi­sa­ti­on opti­ons.

- Ingo Mai­er, sales-engi­neer, Haas Schleif­ma­schi­nen GmbH

Project in Numbers

98%

of sales via the con­fi­gu­ra­tor

50 %

Time saving

4%

Months until the first CREALIS® ver­si­on with suc­cessful use at the Grind­Tec trade fair

>30

Users

98%

Use world­wi­de

THE CUSTOMER BENEFITS AT A GLANCE

  • Sup­port for the sales staff and the aut­ho­ri­sed dea­lers

  • Rapid and error-free quo­te gene­ra­ti­on

  • Che­cking the fea­si­bi­li­ty of the desi­red pro­duct solu­ti­on

  • Visua­li­sa­ti­on of the con­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons with 3D repre­sen­ta­ti­ons

  • Intui­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on and simp­le sys­tem main­ten­an­ce

  • Available online on the inter­net and off­line