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Any glass finisher and manufacturer of safety glass on an industrial scale who can score points with high capacity, state-of-the-art production technology, and sophisticated service is a sought-after market partner. The glass processor Deggendorf mbH (GVG) is such an operation. It recently upgraded and installed the latest generation of A+W software, taking another step toward glass production 4.0.

GVG Deggendorf, which was recently purchased by Arbonia Deutschland GmbH, is a manufacturer of safety glass in southern Germany. Here, approximately 160 extremely well-trained employees use a state-of-the-art machine park to produce glass, many types even with tempered glass in the LAMI, and production runs around the clock. Each day, approximately 3000 square meters of TG are produced in two modern furnaces. Quality and on-time delivery are a matter of course, delivery times are reliably short. Thus it is no wonder that GVG Deggendorf is a long-standing partner of well-known premium suppliers, especially in the sanitary facilities and glass sectors. This is why the Deggendorf glass finishers are recording strong growth.

Becoming a 'smart factory' with new software

So that things remain this way and can be optimized further, it is necessary to constantly update the production technology and the software that controls it. Thanks to intelligent networking, all areas of the company are being integrated on the way to becoming a digital company.

That’s why last year, as part of a big project in cooperation with the software partner A+W, all of the software at GVG Deggendorf was updated and expanded. This was a challenging project that was implemented by a team of employees from both companies with great commitment and maximum expertise. Careful preparation, enough time, and especially the trusting and collegial climate on the team were critical factors for the successful implementation.

“We always had the feeling,” explains Markus Wellisch, Project Manager for GVG Deggendorf, “that A+W helped us quickly and expertly even when problems arose, so that we arrived at a good solution in the end. This creates trust, and I would do it this way again anytime”!

Live operation began at the start of 2021. GVG Managing Director Andreas Fink, “I am happy and proud that we kept on producing after the go-live; without production downtime, breakdowns or customer complaints. This was a big accomplishment for all participants”!

What has changed at GVG Derggendorf due to the A+W software?

OK, almost everything. With the older software, it was no longer possible to manage today’s requirements for performance, transparency, and digital, paperless process control.

Today, the company is controlled in integrated fashion by the current ERP solution A+W Enterprise in the office and A+W Production in production. All information is available in real time exactly where it is needed.

The customer’s production data transmitted online is sent from A+W Enterprise directly to production, where, thanks to intelligent A+W interfaces, it is available immediately for control of the CNC machines: time-consuming manual machine programming is no longer required, which increases throughput speed immensely. No one has to carry around production papers or sketches, and potentially even multiple copies of these.

With the production planning module A+W Production, the lites are pre-sorted in cutting and fed into the appropriate processing stations. For this, orders are pulled apart, the lites are steered individually according to technical issues (e.g. glass thicknesses for tempering) through production, andreassembled again in shipping – without any errors or bottlenecks.

For the greatest flexibility in cutting and custom-tailored batches, GVG Deggendorf uses the A+W Realtime Optimizer on the cutting tables. With this application, already-planned optimization batches can be changed, combined or exchanged. For maximum utilization of the realtime optimization, the lables are printed directly in cutting only just before cutting begins. Changes to the cutting sequence are possible when handling rush orders and almost up to the start of production, for example. A+W Production Terminals at each workstation visualize all necessary lite and production data.

The A+W Smart Companion always knows where each lite is

A continuous PDC system based on the intelligent scan app A+W Smart Companion ensures that the status of each lite is always known: lites are scanned at each workstation, the scanners are read out via WLAN. And A+W Smart Companion is also used to control the automatic breakage pool.

Defective lites can be remade quickly this way, so that they can generally still be delivered on the promised date. “The handling of remakes,” explains Markus Wellisch, “is worlds better as compared to before”.

Andreas Fink adds: “With the new integrated solution, we have a technological basis for increasing our productivity and being able to deploy state-of-the-art machine technology more efficiently. Even now, we are much more productive as compared to 2020. With this important project, we worked with A+W to make our company fit for the digital future”.