It’s hard to imagine Axito’s produc­tion floor without dash­boards. And you only have to enter the Lauphein plant to see the first example of one of these large moni­tors. The one at the entrance shows the current KPIs of the facility, while others in the office area alert staff to any machine malfunc­tions. In the tool preset­ting area, the dash­board provides infor­ma­tion about current machine utiliza­tion levels and any mate­rials that staff need to provide. One hangs in the supervisor’s office and one in the mechan­ical produc­tion cell. And all these digital boards have a common purpose, as Serhat Toykan, Director Manu­fac­turing at Axito, explains: “We want this digi­tal­iza­tion to give us maximum trans­parency.”

We want this digi­tal­iza­tion to give us maximum trans­parency.

Serhat Toykan, Director Manu­fac­turing Axito

This trans­parency helps Axito achieve its targets. “The fact that our employees can see the visu­al­ized metrics them­selves means they are directly involved in the process. That’s some­thing that moti­vates them more than getting instruc­tions from their super­vi­sors. And if anyone comes and says they can’t reach their targets, we talk to them to find out why and thus engage in a problem-solving and improve­ment process,” says Toykan.

Using digi­tal­iza­tion wisely

By reading the dash­boards them­selves, employees can find answers to issues that concern their own activity. For example: How did I perform in my produc­tion cell? How high are my rejects? How many error messages did I get, how long does it take me to rectify any faults? In addi­tion, they show key oper­ating figures, like on-time delivery, cost of non-quality, and output and utiliza­tion levels. They also provide infor­ma­tion on the number of reportable work-related acci­dents. And all without having to manu­ally edit MS Excel spread­sheets in the indi­vidual depart­ments. “This saves time,” says Toykan, and goes on to say: “Thanks to the SAP Analytics Cloud, we can dispense with the manual process of preparing and presenting data, increase trans­parency for all employees, contribute to faster deci­sion-making, and thus ensure the reli­a­bility of supplies across all steps of the process.”

Matthias Göttel, tool preset­ting, appre­ci­ates the overview of the orders and the tracking of the parts.

The direct stock can also be read from the board in the tool preset­ting.

The board at the main entrance informs customers and employees about delivery reli­a­bility, perfor­mance level, quality costs and more.

Colleagues in produc­tion can see at a glance on the board what the perfor­mance is like.

Axito grad­u­ally began intro­ducing the dash­boards at the end of 2021, and made sure that all colleagues were involved right from the start. The idea for the dash­board in the tool preset­ting area, for example, came from an employee. According to Toykan, the response to the boards has been corre­spond­ingly posi­tive ever since. And Matthias Göttel from the tool preset­ting depart­ment adds: “The enhanced trans­parency of the orders ensures that the parts can be tracked. A fast response time for replace­ment tools is impor­tant and can thus be guar­an­teed.”

Never­the­less, as Toykan explains, we’re not using digi­tal­iza­tion just for the sake of it. “Wher­ever it makes more sense to use paper, we’ll stick with paper. The over­riding goal is to contin­u­ously improve our processes.” And even Axito can’t do without analog exchange: “Many conver­sa­tions take place right near the dash­board hanging by the coffee machine,” says Toykan.