GROB-Gruppe

Competence for advanced technology everywhere

Since its foundation in 1926, GROB has developed into an international family-owned company based in Mindelheim. The product portfolio ranges from a universal machining center to a highly complex production system with its own automation, from assembly units in metal-cutting to fully automated assembly lines.

The GROB-Gruppe worldwide

The family-owned company has four manufacturing facilities in Mindelheim, Brazil, USA and China and eight sales and service offices Vertriebs- und Serviceniederlassungen in South Korea, China, India, Moscow, Great Britain, Hungary and Mexico. Worldwide the GROB-Gruppe, with approximately 4,500 employees, generates 960 million euros (2013).

Expertise, a high level of innovation, quality - also in the form of a high degree of production-, and reliability, stand for the name GROB. The most important asset for the GROB-WERKE is their customers and their products – the work pieces. Decades of experience, a high quality and reliability in execution and delivery, guarantee the GROB client an optimum support in all aspects of system business and universal machines.

Up-to-date and individual documentation for each machine

The production BOMs are exported from SAP and adjusted manually, the graphics are prepared with various programs. Next, both where combined in a layout using Microsoft Word, and published as PDF and on paper. To keep the production effort within limits, only general catalogs - without order numbers - are generated.

Requirements

Service technicians and customers expect from GROB up-to-date spare parts catalogs that are easy and intuitive to use and allow the rapid and unambiguous identification of spare parts. An important aspect is language versions. It should be possible, without much effort and additional costs, to translate the catalogs into any desired customer language.

A largely automated catalog production enables the creation of individual, machine-specific catalogs.

Solution

As a basis for the spare parts catalog an individual structure-BOM is exported from SAP via an internally programmed interface, the "GIS" (GROB Information System). From the assemblies with spare parts and wear parts the assembly drawings are collected, which have been generated by the designer in NX via a search query in "GIS", and exported from the Teamcenter PLM system.

The subsequent publication process is fully automated.

Currently, an HTML-version on CD is delivered to the customer.

When necessary, the service engineers are given an HTML version for internal purposes on an encrypted USB stick, with more information about the machine.

The paper catalog is only available at the express request of the customer. The parts identification by the customer should exclusively take place in the electronic catalog to prevent incorrect orders due to "copying" from paper.

Conclusion

At GROB the technical documentation and after-sales service primarily benefit from the introduction of CATALOGcreator®. Of particular note are the following results:

• The creation process of the catalogs is largely automated
• The quality of the catalogs has increased significantly
• The identification of spare parts has become much easier
• The effort in the after-sales service has been significantly reduced
• Incorrect orders have been minimized
• The acceptance of the "new spare parts catalog" is excellent

For the near future there are plans to integrate additional information in the catalog, such as data sheets and circuit diagrams.

„With CATALOGcreator® we have found a solution we can use to provide the customer with individual documentation of his purchased equipment – as up-to-date and future-proof machine documentation. We especially appreciate that TID Informatik has accompanied the project in a professional and goal-oriented manner, and we were able to change the catalog creation within a short time after our purchase decision.”

Stefan Spöcker, CAD lecturer and CIP presenter, GROB-WERKE GmbH & Co. KG