Success Story Aerzener Maschinenfabrik

Integrated SAP ERP/PLM Solution for a Breath of Fresh air in Blower and Compressor Technology

A single source of truth across the complete product development process provides better data quality and allows consistent reuse of engineering data for purchasing, distribution, and manufacturing. To reap these benefits, organizations require not only an integrated ERP/PLM system, but also a competent partner to support the implementation project from beginning to end—a partner that is in a position to provide broad-based support for the optimization of their business processes. According to Axel Stürmer, director of the engineering company’s PLM project, AERZEN has found such a partner in Cideon.

Exemplary Innovations

AERZEN units can be found wherever air and gases are pumped, compressed, or measured. The company has set the standard in innovation with hybrid rotary compressors, which combine blower and compressor technology and as a result use less energy. Some of these units are standard products with or without customer-specific expansions; some are customized products specifically developed as part of a customer order and manufactured in small batches. Accordingly, the company leans heavily towards the engineering side and uses Autodesk Inventor and AutoCAD Mechanical on over 100 workstations.

Obsolete IT Infrastructure

The global manufacturer faced challenges to deliver shorter project schedules and improve delivery reliability which required a modern IT infrastructure to make processes more efficient. Although the legacy ERP system running on an AS/400 met the demands of the parent company, it did not meet the requirements of a division with globally distributed development and manufacturing sites. Therefore, development of the PDM system, Autodesk Productstream, AERZEN designers used to manage their CAD models and drawings was halted and the solution had to be replaced.

Reduced Inventory

It is important to AERZEN to reduce engineering costs further by using modular product systems and improving component and assembly recycling. The system methodology, however, is not mapped in the CAD systems but in the SAP sales configurator. To simplify the search for available materials and their associated documents,  AERZEN integrated the classification software Simus ClassMate into SAP PLM. The requirement was quickly met and the software is instrumental in reducing parts inventory, according to Stürmer.

Reduced Inventory

It is important to AERZEN to reduce engineering costs further by using modular product systems and improving component and assembly recycling. The system methodology, however, is not mapped in the CAD systems but in the SAP sales configurator. To simplify the search for available materials and their associated documents,  AERZEN integrated the classification software Simus ClassMate into SAP PLM. The requirement was quickly met and the software is instrumental in reducing parts inventory, according to Stürmer.

Read more about the project between Aerzener Maschinenfabrik and Cideon in the reference report: