Efficient Interfaces in Mechanical Engineering: What Makes Them Essential?

Networked data makes it easier for companies to optimize their processes and tap into new business opportunities. For many machine manufacturers, however, the consistent use of data across departmental boundaries is still a hope for the future. While sufficient data on spare parts, machines, customers, and service support exists, it is frequently trapped in isolated systems that do not communicate with each other. Interfaces can be used to overcome these hurdles.

So why are interfaces so important?

Be it in e-commerce, the healthcare sector, or industrial manufacturing, interfaces form the backbone of an efficient system landscape and are a prerequisite for digitization. They serve, for example, to enable machine and component manufacturers to smoothly manage data.

Specifically, interfaces ensure that machines, aftersales platforms, and systems such as ERP, PIM, and CRM can communicate seamlessly with each other and exchange data. By smoothly integrating their systems and data, machine manufacturers can:

• Automate their processes and reduce errors
• Manage and use their aftersales data more efficiently
• Optimize service callouts to customers
• Make data-based decisions during service and maintenance planning
• Enhance their service quality
• Provide accurate and up-to-date information for employees and customers
• Reduce data silos across the company
• Improve transparency in all company processes
• Develop new business models such as data-based services

Sorry, this number is unavailable; why data connections often fail

It has long been clear to machine manufacturers and their customers that interfaces are crucial to the success of digitization. Nevertheless, very few companies manage to network their data company-wide. The reasons for this lie partly in their technological DNA and partly in their processes.

Technological obstacles impeding functioning interfaces

In many companies, departments establish different system architectures and varying data structures over time. While tools are being modernized and further developed, the heterogeneous isolated solutions of individual departments never grow together to form a large whole.

Added to this, systems from different manufacturers often use data formats that are not compatible, which makes it difficult to import and export data, and to ensure interoperability between systems and their integration into modern, open interface architectures.

Organizational challenges facing networked data

If company departments want to share data, they not only need to be on the same wavelength technologically, they also need to develop a common mindset – because high quality and consistent data can only be achieved through close collaboration.

Networking projects also require that the parties demonstrate a willingness to transparently share data from their own “areas of sovereignty” with others. However, many managers and IT experts fear threats to compliance with GDPR provisions and information security, and see interfaces as potential gateways for cyberattacks, through which business secrets could fall into the wrong hands.
 

Best practices: what are the benefits of establishing interfaces for your company?

If machine manufacturers succeed in setting up continuous data streams with the help of interfaces, this results in important advantages for both internal processes and collaboration with customers:

• Interfaces are indispensable for predictive maintenance. Machine manufacturers and their customers can record machine data in real time and identify potential problems at an early stage. This allows them to plan maintenance work in good time.
• Interfaces in the spare parts shop ensure that up-to-date and correct information is displayed at all times. When ordering spare parts, users can quickly navigate to the part they need and be sure that it will be delivered on time. This is particularly helpful for sectors such as agriculture, where machine users depend on punctual and correct spare parts deliveries due to the seasonal nature of their industry.
• Shared service portals ensure that technicians and customers of machine manufacturers can find the right information on spare parts and instructions for efficient maintenance with just a few clicks.

The examples show that the benefits of networked data become greater as the number of departments and partners able to work with it grows. That is why interfaces should not only network internal company data, but also offer added value for customers and suppliers.

This creates an ecosystem of valuable information that improves your products and services and simplifies collaboration with other companies.

How are machine and service data interfaces implemented efficiently?

Are you keen to take advantage of end-to-end information and work better with customers and partners? In the second part of this article, you’ll find out what steps you need to take to achieve this, and how you can overcome the technological obstacles that stand in the way of efficient interfaces.