Durr, one of the world’s leading mechanical and plant engineering firms with extensive expertise in automation and digitalisation / Industry 4, has announced a new business intelligence application for control technology.

DXQbusiness.intelligence saves information optimised for reading in a separate data warehouse, visualises it using clear dashboards, and allows the user to create custom reports. This means that manufacturers always have a close eye on the availability, performance, and quality of their plants.

The best way to efficiently control production processes in the automotive industry is through the use of relevant, up-to-date, and transparent key figures. Solutions based on business intelligence (BI) functions provide a fast overview of production, and in this way support decision-making in plants. They do this by collecting important information, preparing it, and displaying it in a clear format.

What differentiates DXQbusiness.intelligence is that the historical production data is collated from different sources, transformed, stored and optimised for reading in the data warehouse, so that it can be easily accessed for analyses and reports.

Unlike conventional servers which do not store data optimised for reading, the separation of the data warehouse from the customer’s operational system has the big advantage that accessing the data warehouse does not cause any delays in production.

All key data on the screen
The data warehouse provides structures and tables for long-term orderly data storage across division boundaries. Being part of DXQcontrol, which is Durr’s control technology for controlling an entire plant’s production, DXQbusiness.intelligence displays the production data in a clear, easily understood dashboard. It works in a similar way to the instrument panel in the cockpit of an airplane, which shows the pilot all key data on one screen. Transferred to car production in a plant, the dashboards show the managers mission-critical data to keep production on the right track.

Enabling data-driven decisions
Every decision-making process requires different data. To get the right overview, Durr says the user can navigate purposefully with DXQbusiness.intelligence across the entire site, limited to specific production areas such as cathodic electrocoating or focused on individual lines like the cathodic electrocoating dryer. For production, the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) as well as quality and quantity data is displayed. For individual lines within the production area the temporal progressions of the above-mentioned key figures are also displayed.

According to Durr, users can create reports and arrange them individually according to their priorities and company standards. This gives a solid starting ground for decision-making based on specific production data. Situations that require particular attention can be quickly monitored and tracked using custom reports.

The Durr Group supplies a number of sectors like the automotive industry and generated sales of 3.92 billion euros in 2019. The company has around 16,500 employees and 112 business locations in 34 countries including India. The Group operates in the market with the brands Durr, Schenck and HOMAG and with five divisions:

Paint and Final Assembly Systems: paint shops as well as final assembly, testing and filling technology for the automotive industry

Application Technology: robot technologies for the automated application of paint, sealants and adhesives

Clean Technology Systems: air pollution control, noise abatement systems and coating systems for battery electrodes

Measuring and Process Systems: balancing equipment and diagnostic technology

Woodworking Machinery and Systems: machinery and equipment for the woodworking industry