Creating shared value in the digital networked economy

Industry 4.0 “out of the box”

Digitalization in the industrial sector is a major challenge for many SMEs: Often their hardware isn’t state-of-the-art anymore, they lack the necessary in-house expertise, and don’t have time—with the pressure to be agile and innovative growing by the day. But companies can’t avoid Industry 4.0 and digital transformation if they want to keep in the race for competitive advantages and long-term success.

logicline’s job is to support companies in their digital transformation, and it relies on fast, customized implementation to deliver that support. assets360 is logicline’s modular system with proven tools for digitalizing service processes in the machinery and industrial equipment manufacturing industry. The modules include the actual service—such as a replacement parts exchange as well as a digital machine folder, an alarm ticket system, and machine data processing as part of predictive analytics. “We think of our job as to lead integration projects with the goal of bringing people closer to machines, improving efficiency, and delivering advantages to our customers in the process,” explains Edgar Schüber, Managing Director of logicline.

Customized OT-IT integration

The integration of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) requires an IoT solution that is not only fast, secure, and user-friendly, but also one that is individually adaptable and that delivers transparency and cost advantages to end customers. Cumulocity is perfect for this task and is part of logicline’s assets360 modular solution. So, it’s a good thing that logicline has many years of experience working with Cumulocity. As a partner and an enabling partner of ADAMOS (the strategic alliance in the mechanical and plant engineering sector for Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)), logicline has been working with Cumulocity for many years to drive digitalization and generate a value chain for customers and partners.

“assets360 is the umbrella term for a series of modules that we use to prepare for the often heterogeneous problems in machinery manufacturing so we’re able to react quickly and not have to reinvent the wheel constantly," explains Schüber. Cumulocity is a key component of this modular solution because “when it comes to dedicated solutions for our customers, Cumulocity is the IoT platform that we focus on and recommend,” Schüber emphasizes.

logicline offers added value for customers and partners

One recent example comes from a logicline customer that is a machinery and automation supplier producing rotary indexing tables used in automotive manufacturing. As a premium supplier, the customer wants to elevate its business above the competition through continuous quality and service optimization. To achieve this objective, the company launched a digitalization project with logicline in 2019. The project aimed to connect the rotary indexing table’s technology with the cloud and generate data to improve system availability.

The result: benefits for everyone involved. Transparency ensures a connected customer experience for the operators—the automation supplier’s customers—who can access the data to optimize all of their processes and reduce costs, on the one hand. And on the other hand, the manufacturer also benefits by analyzing the data locally via an edge component in order to draw its own conclusions and determine further areas for optimization.

For logicline and Cumulocity, the project is a great example of shared value. The user-friendly IoT solution is a highway into the 21st century: It gives companies data at the push of a button, connects industrial equipment to the IoT easily and securely, is configured and ready to go within 10 minutes, and offers a wide range of possibilities for analytics—with the results and benefits passed on to the end customer. This creates an ecosystem around the Cumulocity platform that includes all of the stakeholders and improves quality and efficiency.

The possibilities for optimization and analytics that Cumulocity delivers make these improvements possible. For example, logicline’s customer uses predictive maintenance to reduce its warehousing costs and increase satisfaction among its own customers. They benefit from higher utilization and more reliable availability, from accessing the machines at the push of a button and networking the individual machines together, and from the simplified service processes. Then the companies can turn around and invest the money they saved in more digital transformation.

In the future, logicline plans to tailor and expand its service processes to suit many more customers with its assets360 modular system. That’s especially exciting in machinery manufacturing because the product plays a special role here and has built-in intelligence. Investments in services that network intelligent machines and the people behind them are solid, smart investments in the future viability of an industry and its partners.