The Schunk Data Analytics Platform: data driven operations for higher yield and lower cost

Since 1913, the German Schunk Group has developed into an international technology group and leading supplier of high-tech products. Constant innovation has kept the Schunk Group relevant for its customers for over 100 years. To develop intelligent products, services and processes, Schunk has adopted a Digitalization strategy that makes it a data driven organization.

To support this strategy, Itility has built a Data Analytics solution that consolidates and visualizes data from across the factory and its equipment: the Schunk Data Analytics Platform (SDAP). Making it the single source of truth for data-driven use-cases. Quality engineers, equipment engineers, and planners analyze and act in a matter of minutes, with lower cost and higher yield as results.

Design and implementation

To guarantee high value as well as high adoption of the solution, we used our step-by-step approach based on combined teams.

This is an important success factor, as people need time to adapt to a data-driven way of working. As Itility, we brought in project management, data engineering, IT engineering and manufacturing expertise, and worked together with end-users, domain experts and engineers.

To accelerate the design of the SDAP, we used our “Intelligent Data Factory” product (IDF) comprised of several cloud building blocks. This is our architecture framework tailored for factory environments, with code templates, best practices and standards, which significantly reduces the design and implementation time. It typically takes about 12 weeks to fully implement a use case.

Several sources and types of data were cleaned, combined and correlated and then visualized in SPC (statistical process control) tooling.

To make analyzing more user friendly we implemented a GenAI assistant. This took away the necessity for users to understand how the tables and fields are organized, and it reduced the need for manual selection and filtering. 

Secure platform operations and knowledge transfer

To ensure continuity, we created an operating model adjusted for Schunk including processes for internal charging, cost control, security management and data governance.

As soon as use cases were active, we started daily platform management under a Service Level Agreement that fit the needs of the users. We then gradually shifted activities to Schunk employees, transferring knowledge on the job.

Generating value every day

The data platform currently supports over 20 use cases, some of which help Schunk predict maintenance and significantly speed up root cause analyses. These cases show a double-digit ROI.