Kardex Gruppe

CATALOGcreator® convinces as best business application

The Kardex Group is further expanding its service business with CATALOGcreator®, the software solution for electronic spare parts catalogs and service information systems. This business application convinces with very fast loading times and clear information preparation in the 2D online catalog.

Company

The Kardex Group is a globally active industrial partner for intralogistic solutions and a leading provider of automated storage solutions and material flow systems. The Group consists of two entrepreneurially managed divisions: Kardex Remstar and Kardex Mlog.

Kardex Remstar offers solutions for highly compacted bearings on the smallest possible footprint, thereby significantly increasing productivity and efficiency of work processes. Kardex Mlog specialises in integrated material flow systems and automated high-bay warehouses. Around 1.900 Employees work for Kardex Group companies in over 30 countries worldwide.

Mlog systems (Picture source: Kardex Mlog)

Initial situation

Even before the introduction of software for electronic spare parts catalogs, the Kardex Group already offered the option of obtaining information about spare parts online. PDFs with information about the devices were integrated on their homepage, which were gladly used by the dealer network. These elaborately created PDF documents contained very detailed spare parts information.

The information on the devices consisted of a spare parts list and schematic illustrations. However, there was no parts list or exploded drawing for the respective product in the PDF document. The PDFs were at that time an important source for finding the right spare part and for ordering. To order the part, however, the relevant information had to be copied and then sent to Kardex by e-mail. The identification and ordering process for spare parts should be significantly simplified in the future. In 2017, Kardex therefore launched a project to look for a new, modern solution.

Requirements

As part of a market study, the Kardex project team compared various solutions for electronic spare parts catalogs and service information systems. For this purpose, a detailed catalog of questions was compiled in order to be able to decide on the right partner based on this information. In addition to a certain competence and experience of the software partner, the solution provider should be located in a German-speaking region in order to be close to Kardex. TID Informatik GmbH, headquartered in Inning at the Ammersee in Upper Bavaria, was among those shortlisted for a new solution.

In the end TID could prevail over the competition and convinced with flexibility and a wide range of different interfaces in the software solution CATALOGcreator®. Pascal Waldvogel, project manager at Kardex, explains: "It was not only the service performance of TID Informatik that convinced us, but also the high level of technical know-how of the TID project team".

Catalog product image (Mlog)

Solution

Kardex decided to introduce a 2D spare parts catalog with the software solution CATALOGcreator®. The particular challenge in the project was to integrate the prepared data on the "old" homepage accordingly in the new electronic catalog and to restructure and clearly display it there.

The TID project team accompanied the company very closely during the implementation phase. TID was able to provide support with a great deal of expertise, especially in the preparation of data. The aim was to import the data from various systems into the electronic spare parts catalog as automatically as possible and to make all service information easily and quickly findable online. A further advantage of the electronic catalog is the simple ordering function: The identified spare part can be transferred to the further ordering process with a single click via a shopping cart functionality.

Since going live, the electronic spare parts catalog has been used by the Kardex Group's large dealer network. Kardex is particularly impressed by the very fast loading times in the online catalog. Expressed in the words of Pascal Waldvogel, Manager Digital Transformation: "Everyone who uses the spare parts catalog is impressed by the speed of the system. You do not have to be afraid of the comparison with Google and Facebook, that’s a real pleasure! The CATALOGcreator® is the fastest business application I know. “

Experience and outlook

For the future, Kardex plans to integrate 3D models into the catalog automatically in order to offer users of the electronic spare parts catalog even more benefits and additional convenient search functions. By zooming, rotating and the possibility to hide or make parts transparent, 3D spare parts catalogs represent a further optimisation in the service business.

There are also plans for an app that will enable technicians to easily access the required information and documents relating to spare parts management from their smartphones. "We still have a lot of ideas that we want to implement with the TID team, to further expand our service business," confirms the project manager.

Conclusion

Pascal Waldvogel summarizes: "There are few companies that understand a medium-sized industrial company as well as TID. Particularly noteworthy is the good cooperation with TID, both with the project team and the hotline. We are looking forward to the next goals, which we will realize with the software solution CATALOGcreator®."