Using online support to optimize the production process

A new design for the support bracket of the Mercedes C-Class unexpectedly caused headaches for Dirk Horn, Head of Industrial Engineering/Injection Molding at Huf Hülsbeck & Fürst, headquartered in Velbert, and his team. The Corona travel restrictions hit what was already a time-critical ramp-up project in the hottest phase. With support from ENGEL, and virtual teamwork across three countries, the specialist for vehicle locking systems nevertheless managed to present good parts to the customer within just one week. In addition, the production process was optimized by means of online support. 

Three new molds from Yantai Huf Tools in China, the group's in-house mold shop, had to pass sample inspection and be put into operation in Romania. This is actually the daily business of the process specialists. "We follow the molds," Horn explains. "There are times when we spend more than 50 percent of our working time on a plane."

The production site in Arad, Romania, bundles the support bracket production for the whole of Europe and is growing. A brand-new ENGEL e-victory 400 injection molding machine with MuCell technology package was in place there and ready for the new molds. Although specialized in MuCell processes, the most recent support bracket project posed a special challenge for the machine operators in Arad. This is because Dirk Horn and his team in Germany have the commissioning know-how. They are the people who inspect the samples and qualify the molds on site in Yantai, before accompanying commissioning at the production site and launching the series production process.

Covid-19 disrupted this established procedure. The three new molds were sent to Romania without sample inspection, where commissioning including qualification had to be mastered for the first time without the on-site support of the team from Velbert. However, the production team in Arad was not left to its own devices. "The set-up staff on-site walked through the production floor with their laptops open, streaming a video of what was going on, where challenges still had to be solved, and what the freshly molded components looked like," reports Christian Muthenthaler, hotline processing engineer at ENGEL's headquarters in Schwertberg, Austria. The third member of the team, Dirk Horn from Velbert, joined in to optimize the production process by means of online support.

Using ENGEL's e-connect.24 remote maintenance tool, both Muthenthaler and Horn were able to track all the machine parameters in real time, give instructions or remotely control the machine directly. The process was ramped up and optimized in this way across three locations. And for all three molds within just one week. Because the customer, Mercedes, wanted to see good parts in that time frame. "The fact that the online process worked so well overall even surprised us," says Dirk Horn, drawing an extremely positive conclusion. All three molds were ramped up on time and Mercedes was satisfied with the parts. The support brackets with the new design are now in series production.