Clever under electricity
PDF editor for circuit diagrams
Sometimes it's the small, clever solutions that make the big difference. Like the PDF editor for circuit diagrams skemdit, which helps the plant manufacturer Göpfert to structure its electrical engineering workflow more transparently and effectively.
Göpfert Maschinen GmbH digitises manufacturing
Göpfert Maschinen is one of the world's leading manufacturers of machines for processing corrugated board. Many of its product developments are considered industry-wide milestones. For some time now, Wilhelm Ott and Walter Pickel, the electrical engineering management duo at Göpfert, have been looking for a powerful PDF viewer to digitally edit circuit diagrams. But no tool satisfies their requirements. And so electrical engineering production remains a work with paper, often involving more than 2,000 printed pages per system and filling up to four folders. When Blumenbecker presented its skemdit software in the summer of 2020, Ott and Pickel were sceptical at first whether this small tool could really deliver what it promised.
The challenge: making redline changes visible to all stakeholders
Up to 20 electricians often work simultaneously on the Göpfert plants, which are built in Wiesentheid, Bavaria. In addition, there are employees in construction, quality control, commissioning and customer service. For all of them, the circuit diagram is the central working document in which they enter changes and comments and also tick off tests. And they do this by hand. "As more copies of a circuit diagram circulate, it becomes more difficult to keep all the diagrams up to date," says Ott. And not every colleague has legible handwriting or makes a note of his abbreviation. "To correctly record all redline changes, to assign them correctly and to hand over a complete system documentation in CAE format to the customer is always a real challenge."
» One notices that skemdit was developed by a practitioner! «
The idea: working together on one digital document
This is exactly where the software tool developed by Blumenbecker comes in. With skemdit, all involved can work together on a digital document across the entire value chain. Redline changes such as annotations are entered via tablet or screen, lines that have already been laid are digitally ticked off and quality stamps are set. All inputs converge in a central cloud document and are thus available to all trades in real time. "This guarantees transparency and makes cooperation efficient," explains Thomas Hagemann from Blumenbecker, who developed the software with his digitalisation team; initially for his own use. "Then we realised how helpful the tool could be for machine and plant manufacturers," adds project manager Florian Sontowski.
PLC interface enables fast customer service
A statement at which Wilhelm Ott nods in agreement. Since April 2021, he has been using the software for the help function of his systems, among other things. If a problem appears at the customer's, all it takes is the press of a button and the circuit diagram opens on the system display - exactly at the point where the error occurred. This eliminates the need for laborious searching through thousands of pages of paper documentation. Thanks to the PLC function of skemdit, Göpfert's customer service can even connect directly to the customer's systems and look into the machine controls. "This allows us to solve problems much faster than before. And ideally, the customer will no longer need our customer service at all," Ott looks to the future.
Individual adaptations facilitate the work
He likes the fact that skemdit is not a rigid standard solution, rather it allows for individual adaptations such as personal user administration, Ott says appreciatively and adds: "The introduction of skemdit is an important step for us in the direction of paperless production." When all employees in production are equipped with industrial-grade tablets, it should also be possible to manage holiday requests or attendance and absence digitally from the workbench.
