Vacom is on the road to success, as the demand for ultra-clean vacuum components is growing in more and more industries - for example in research, chip production or for coating optics and displays. Today, Vacom employs around 350 people and is one of Europe's leading suppliers of vacuum technology.

Highly complex production
"Our products are extremely complex, sometimes consisting of several hundred components," explains Möser. Vacom produces most of these components itself in batch sizes of up to 1,000 units. "We manufacture complex products such as our ball or cylinder vacuum chambers to order." The typical batch size here is one to a maximum of ten units. Kevin Möser calls this "series prototype construction". The semi-finished parts repeatedly switch back and forth between the individual machines during the production process. Classic line production is not possible. Classic production control systems such as Kanban are also not applicable at Vacom, as the same component is rarely required at one station. For this reason, the employees had to completely assemble the material at the start of order processing and then distribute it across the various machines and workstations.

Searching for materials takes too much time
"We put the semi-finished products and raw materials into production and got an end product," explains Möser. "Although we knew what was happening in production, we didn't know where the individual materials were at any given time." Vacom therefore found it difficult to react to changes. "Our employees spent a lot of time searching for components and moving them to their workstations. It got to the point where we had at least one colleague per shift who did nothing but look for materials," he sums up. With a production team of 50 people at the time, that was clearly too much.

Six transport robots supply the 45 or so workstations in production. They are controlled by the viadat WMS, which in turn receives the transport order from the MES © viastore

On the way to the smart factory
Vacom decided to transform its production into a smart factory. To do this, Möser and his team first generated a transparent factory: in a digital image, they defined how the individual components should run through production and which work steps should be carried out. "This makes it clear where things are located, what is currently being done and who is working on which machine," explains the COO. This data forms the basis for the second stage on the road to the smart factory - the creation of responsive production. To achieve this, Vacom relies on the Hydra Manufacturing Execution System (MES) from MPDV and the viadat Warehouse Management System (WMS) from viastore Software, which already manages the existing automated warehouse. The joint data management of WMS, MES and ERP makes it possible to react quickly to customer changes or new requirements.

The next stage of the smart factory followed in 2019: the self-regulating factory. Initially, Kevin Möser intended to fully automate production logistics with transport robots. He turned to viastore for this: "The experts explained that their use was standard in viadat." However, in this specific case, it was about the logistical supply of production. This meant that the WMS had to receive an order from the MES after each work step in order to control the robots: "viadat now has a standard interface that enables data exchange with all common MES solutions," explains viastore project manager Simon Kallinger. "WMS, MES and SAP are equal partners and have their own decision-making powers," emphasizes Kevin Möser. "MES and WMS pass on information independently, without going through SAP." They automatically control the tasks for the 45 workstations in production and the six transport robots.

Two systems that regulate themselves
SAP is responsible for order generation and transfers the production order with parts list to Hydra. The MES takes over the detailed planning - which machine, which tool, which material, which employee - and then transmits a parts list including scheduling to viadat. This generates replenishment orders for the respective requirements per work step, which are buffered in the supermarket warehouse in the production hall. This reduces the intermediate storage space at the individual work stations. The WMS only issues a transport order shortly before processing, and a robot brings the material to the work station. Here it is stored again in small racks before it finally goes into processing. The worker places the finished order on an output buffer and scans it. This triggers an instruction in viadat so that a robot then takes the goods to the supermarket warehouse or directly to the next work station. Simon Kallinger: "We have thus implemented a genuine just-in-time concept." Kevin Möser is certain that this will result in huge efficiency gains. "Our colleagues won't have to gather their materials or carry boxes. Everything they need for the production step will be delivered directly to their workstation. All they have to do themselves is set up and process."

This also applies to the specialists who are responsible for the organization and processing of production: Thanks to the new transparency, they know at all times where which material is located, how busy the machines are and how far the processing of the product has progressed. "Their workload is reduced many times over," explains Möser confidently. "Only when the systems are unable to solve certain problems - for example, because a supplier part is missing from the warehouse - is a person called in to help. Employees are no longer used to push boxes back and forth, but to solve problems." He is certain: "Only those who can react quickly and flexibly to customer requests without creating chaos will remain successful on the market in the long term. Viewing production and logistics as different pairs of shoes will no longer work in the future."