Raumedic gears for Industry 4.0

Investments in quality leadership and production optimization

Helmbrechts – Raumedic AG is introducing a new IT-based quality-assurance and production-control system as a way of raising its high quality standards and further boosting the efficiency of its production process. Under the company’s plan, the system will be installed in all Raumedic production locations in Germany and the United States by 2019. The medical technology manufacturer reached an agreement on this goal with the software provider Guardus Solutions, the company that in October will design the machine link for both existing machinery of Raumedic and for future investments.

Increased transparency thanks to digitalized production
The manufacturing execution system (MES) is designed to take the transparency of the production operation of the international polymer processor to the next level. With the help of the new system, the status of machinery, production data and necessary work documents will be available at all times on a single platform. MES can help reduce potential sources of error, identify savings potential and increase it. The solution also offers standardized, cross-location performance figures as well as reporting and analysis data in real time.
Step by step, MES will eliminate decentralized island systems, Excel lists and paper documents in a way that will simplify the lives of production employees in particular. Digitalized, paperless processes are designed to perfect manufacturing.
 
Quality and customer benefits are critical
The solution will also make significant improvements in quality management: Individual products cannot just be tracked all the way back to the raw material. They can also be digitalized, cross-linked, managed and documented from the time of their development to their delivery. The MES covers the entire product cycle. In addition, integrated training and qualification systems ensure that employees have the very latest knowledge at their disposal.
 “The use of digitalized processes will not just open up undreamed of possibilities. Above all, it will boost the value that we can and will generate for our customers,” said Martin Schenkel, Head of Operations at Raumedic.
 
The basis for sustainability and competitiveness
“Medical technology and pharmaceuticals are sensitive business areas that have extremely high quality requirements,” CEO Martin Bayer said. Bayer noted that not only the company’s customers, but also government regulators place strict demands on the documentation of product and process data. As a result, a central standardized data management system will create significant improvements, he added.
Florian Pöhner, Head of IT at Raumedic, is overseeing the implementation of the IT solution. “The system creates an optimal link between our quality control and production units,” Pöhner said. “The MES is a consequential step for us and will enable us to take on future projects in terms of Industry 4.0.” He added that the company selected Guardus Solutions because the IT provider had an excellent reputation in the area of medical technology and offered a solution with a high level of usability.