An innovative project with Mosca shows the potentials of close cooperation between specialists who are aided by intelligent software solutions. The strapping machine manufacturer’s use of the integrated CATALOGcreator® in Innosoft software represents a significant added value for the company.
Founded in 1966, the company has been working with an electronic spare parts catalog for a long time. Service technicians used this catalog to match parts with part numbers. This was aggravated by the plethora of similar parts contained in the catalog. This original solution has since been replaced with the innovative software for spare parts catalogs and service information systems: CATALOGcreator®.
To fully use the practical features of CATALOGcreator®, existing catalogs first had to be migrated. Due to the large variety of components, Mosca has one catalog per machine, which resulted in the import from the legacy system of 70,000 catalogs. CATALOGcreator® fully automates the creation of catalogs.
Innosoft and Mosca have been business partners since 1999. Meanwhile, Mosca uses many Innosoft modules. The digital service report and ticket system are part and parcel of Mosca’s daily business. In 2017, Innosoft attracted the attention and interest of Gregor Karmowski of Mosca at TID Informatik’s cDAY anniversary in the Allianz Arena with a presentation on the ‘Service Excellence’ initiative.
‘Service Excellence’ is a successful partnership between various specialists, including TID Informatik GmbH and Innosoft GmbH. Innosoft is one of the leading companies in the development of project and service management systems for process optimization, primarily in mechanical and plant engineering. Innosoft service management and resource planning supports the service process from notification through resource planning and mobile field service to invoicing. The aim of the ‘Service Excellence’ initiative is to create added value for service.
Gregor Karmowski, head of the CIP project department at Mosca, contributes his broad experience from his leading position in sales development and sales controlling. “Following the presentation at cDAY 2017, I had the idea to connect the two systems through an interface. This would result in deep integration of the electronic catalog with resource planning and be of great benefit to us.”
To substantiate this vision, Mosca invited TID and Innosoft to a kick-off meeting, where the project managers of Mosca, Innosoft and TID collected their ideas and began to sketch out a solution. To allow for future updates of the solution, a one-to-one integration of the interface with the standard, instead of a custom solution for Mosca, was the declared goal.
Part of the project was the integration of CATALOGcreator® features with the Innosoft service management system. The integration was to combine CATALOGcreator® for identification of spare parts with the recording of actual data in the Innosoft Service Report.
The new interface offers many practical features for Mosca. Registration of spare parts is simplified by the interface and the connection to the shopping cart. The user-friendly handling drastically increased the acceptance of service technicians for internal use of the software. The benefits for users are great, both in field service and in technical support, as well as in tender preparation. The fast track through the direct link from the service report to the spare-parts catalog simplifies work. Another advantage of the service portal is direct access to machine-related drawings and other helpful documentation.
From the Innosoft Service Report, you can open assigned spare-parts catalogs for each machine in the Machines section. If no catalog is assigned to the selected machine this option is not available.
Click the button to view the assigned spare-parts catalog of the machine.
From the Innosoft Service Report, you can also open the counterpart for each article in CATALOGcreator® in the Material section.
The button to open an article is located on the left of the Innosoft form. On the right, you see the corresponding view in the catalog with the selected spare part.
Shopping carts in CATALOGcreator® can be imported to the Innosoft Service Report at the push of a button.
The left shows the Innosoft receipt in the “Spare parts” view. The right shows the spare-parts catalog with the shopping cart.
The shopping cart is imported to the Innosoft Service Report at the push of a button.
Prior to this project, Innosoft and TID had no common points of contact at Mosca. The combination of the two Innosoft and TID products was a success for everyone involved. The electronic spare-parts catalog and the Innosoft tool had previously been used as independent solutions. Around 30 Mosca technicians may now get access to the catalog through a mobile client at the push of a button. When viewing a part, additional parts lists and other parts provide additional valuable information.
The new interface unites the most important steps in technical service without discontinuing the system. In the mobile client, one click takes you to the spare-parts catalog and the service & information system. Users simply select the correct spare part and return to the Innosoft tool immediately. The interface went live with enormous success in early 2019. The solution will soon be rolled out in Mosca’s subsidiaries abroad. Further additions will follow, as innovative ideas for further optimization will certainly be added during the trial.
“The solution we developed in collaboration with Mosca and Innosoft is a real highlight. By integrating the interface with our software standard, we can offer this integration to all customers who are facing similar challenges. We know from experience that this interface is of great interest to most customers. Thanks go to Mosca, which – together with Innosoft and us – has pioneered these solutions that many other companies will benefit from in the future,” says Robert Schäfer, Managing Director of TID Informatik. “We are happy about the joint success of this project and give our heartfelt thanks to all participants for the great cooperation. We look forward to presenting this solution to a wider audience of experts. I am convinced that the response and the interest in this solution will be overwhelming.”
