Significant Amount of Cost Advantages Can Be Derived From Standardisation

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Interview: The New Valve Termionals Fulfil More Than All Expectations

Both engineers Klaus Sonntag, Head of Maintenance at B. Braun in Germany and Juergen Weber, Head of PA Sales at Festo in Germany realised a remarkable project for standardisation at B. Braun.

PROCESS: Mr. Sonntag, what were the most persuasive arguments for your standardization project?

Sonntag: Obviously the reduction of the maintenance costs due to less spare parts and less training expenses as well as the reduction of unavoidable plant shutdown times.

PROCESS: Why have you agreed to such a strict standardization? Doesn’t it mean to be dependent on others to a certain extent?

Sonntag: Where maintenance and repair is concerned it makes you rather independent. It is less effort to plan maintenance and spare parts as well as to train our staff more specifically. As a plant operator you always depend in a certain way on the quality and loyalty of your suppliers. Therefore reliable partners are very important.

PROCESS: Certainly there was some resistance at B. Braun and their machine builders (OEMs). Mr. Weber, how did you deal with?

Weber: We did face some resistance of the project team, as such topics are rather annoying in the early phase of a project. It is consuming time, which you usually don’t have in this project phase. But due to the fact that we have taken over a large part of the work we could finally win the customer for this topic. In the beginning also the OEMs thought, it would be additional work. But with the support of Festo the efforts of this change were kept within a certain limit. Besides that it was definitely a change to a more modern product. Due to the good experiences gained in this project some OEMs take this product now as a standard.

PROCESS: Mr. Weber, can you briefly summarise the most important steps of such a project?

Weber: We start with an analysis of the current automation inventory of the machines. Then we select the right components under the consideration of the technical requirements – for the machines in Factory Automation (FA) and the process facilities in Process Automation (PA) – followed by the design of modular control cabinet types and the specifications of the equipment, which is then part of the tender. Important is that Festo also supports the OEMs and DCS suppliers by the integration of the solutions. By following this approach the design, the assembly and the delivery of the control cabinets, integrated in the machines and connected to the DCS, to B. Braun was possible.

PROCESS: Mr. Sonntag, where do you see the major improvements?

Sonntag: The "specialty" in this project is, that two totally different standardization aspects were taken into consideration: on the one hand we have the same automation components in the process facilities (PA) and the machines (FA) and on the other hand standardised control cabinets in a modular system. Both mean a big advantage in the project engineering, the commissioning and in the maintenance of the total “Life Cycle” of the plant.

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