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 SIEMENS PTD M employs NXTools+ for projecting and configuration of medium- voltage switchgears. The solution is based on the CRM software PiSA sales. As an open middleware it ensures flexible and efficient data management. NXTools+ is used worldwide and enables SIEMENS PTD M to avail themselves optimally of the opportunities of global markets.
 Sector: Plant construction in the area of energy supply Area of application : - Graphic projecting
- configuration of medium-voltage switchgear
Project data:
- In operation since 2006
- PiSA sales 4D
- Database MS SQL-Server 2005
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Integration :
- SAP interface for hand-off of production data
- Connection to the central Siemens product database
- Graphic visualization in MS Office Visio
- Integration of MS Office applications
| Customer & Sector
SIEMENS PTD M develops turnkey solutions for medium voltage power supply plants world-wide. The sales processes are complex. They include the technical connection of all system components as well as the coordination of the required services. SIEMENS PTD M thereby serves customers from different branches of industry such as the steel industry, chemical industry, food and drink industry, automotive industry and the oil and gas sector.
Initial Situation & Challenge
SIEMENS PTD M discovered a large economiza-tion potential in care of customer relations at an early stage. In order to stay internationally competitive, an opportunity had to be provided to project all medium-voltage switchgears around the world integratively online, to configure them customer-specifically and edit them ready for quote. The requirements on the solution providers and the projection tool were:
- Development partner with professional know-how
- Central data record in one application
- Assurance of consistency and completeness in plant configuration
- Worldwide access of the decentral projecting and sales units to the application
- Quote generation in consideration of basic local parameters such as language and currency
- Seamless delivery of the production order to the ERP-System
- Simple integration of new plants
- Upward compatible technology for constant advancement and adaption
Project Course & Solution
SIEMENS PTD M cooperates with PiSA since 1997 and successfully uses the technical projecting tool NXTools, which was developed collec-tively. SIEMENS PTD M chose the company on the basis of its longtime professional experience as IT solution provider for the investment goods industry. Not only was the professional specialization convincing, but also the established and adaptable PiSA technology. On the one hand, plant configurations could quickly be integrated in the system with the aid of customizing, on the other hand the PiSA sales repository ensured the universal porting of the application worldwide. The project NXTools+ started in February 2006 as a follow-up project of NXTools. The challenge was to utilize the advantages of the latest PiSA sales technology for the technical projecting of medium-voltage switchgears.
The core objectives were:
- Higher quality of technical projecting through improved interlocking concept
- Price-conscious projecting through comparison of plants with equal technical equipment
- Simplified operation of the application
18 months later already, the solution know-how of 10 medium- voltage switchgears total could be provided in the system. The implementation of the same number of plants in the system used by SIEMENS before NXTools would have taken several years. In the course of the project, the advantages of the new PiSA sales technology showed clearly:
- Short developmental period through mapping of the configuration logic in the system and employment of XML for quote generation
- Minor time and effort for the enlargement by new plant types
- Little time and effort for the change of plant types
- Technical logic can be stored easily and centrally as knowledge base
To the back office, NXTools+ offers an integrated solution from the quote up to the delivery of the production parts list to SAP. All staff members access the same up-to-date state of the product during projecting via the PiSA sales Windows client. It is stored on a central server. The product logic is the same for all plants. It sees to it that medium-voltage switchgears and their components are configured faultlessly and that no position is missing in the quote documents. Complementary components such as low-voltage devices are projected in a separate application and embedded via an interface. For control and documentation, the construction of the complete plant can be visualized graphically at the push of a button in Visio.
But NXTools+ does not only support technically. With the automatic pricing realized in the second project step 2006, the engineers company can monitor the total price of the plant as well as the prices of the individual components or modules directly during configuration. This can be an important gain of information, e.g. in situations when the favorable quote has to be created quickly or special price expectations of the customer have to be considered. In the system used so far, the price information was only available after the generation of the parts list.
The completed quote and the assigned plant documentation are generated directly from the system and can be exported in up to 10 languages, even in Kanji for the Asian market. The required text modules are stored centrally in the data base and therefore standardized globally.
If SIEMENS receives the order, the data are directly passed on to manufacturing. The engineers are able to smoothly work on the same project, even if their computers are thousands of kilometers away from each other. If new plants or changes in plants have been entered in the system, these are immediately available in all work centers around the world. Because all plant data, the associated configuration logic and the required configuration dialogs of the user interface are stored in the central data base by the repository technology of PiSA sales.
Results Achieved:
NXTools+ is applied internationally. Whether in Denmark, Austria, the USA, Brazil or Thailand, around the globe staff members handle quotes and orders in the same manner. The quotes can be generated in multiple languages and arbitrary currencies. Furthermore, NXTools+ centrally provides standardized solutions. Customers with the same wishes are offered the same plants globally. Thereby the time and effort in the offer phase could be reduced significantly. In detail, this means:
- Shorter processing periods save time.
- Faster alternative quotes reduce time and effort.
- The common access to solutions that have already been worked out by staff members taps saving potential.
The simple integration of new plant configurations gradually expands the solution know-how provided in the application. „Customizing allows for considerable reduction of time and financial effort of data maintenance for the extension of additional medium-voltage switch-gears“, says head of the NXTools+ project, Ms. Dr. Herold.
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