Case study

How Bosch Rexroth ensures the highest product quality with i-flow

Customer

Bosch Rexroth is a leading global specialist in drive and control technologies. With over 200 years of industrial experience, the company combines global application experience in the market segments of factory automation, mobile applications and mechanical and plant engineering. Bosch Rexroth develops innovative solutions that help customers to produce more efficiently, make machines and systems more flexible and drive digitalization in various industries. As part of the Bosch Group, Bosch Rexroth benefits from the resources and network of one of the largest private industrial companies in the world to continuously invest in research and development and promote sustainable technologies that offer both ecological and economic benefits.

"i-flow's data hub allows anyone to work with factory data while ensuring control over access to critical resources."

Christian Kircher (Director Engineering Excellence)

Challenge

Bosch Rexroth faced a common challenge in the industry. Manual monitoring and documentation processes for distributed product testing on numerous test benches led to errors, untraceable actions and costly downtime. The inefficient processes impeded the accurate tracking and analysis of quality and test bench data. This in turn made it difficult to identify and implement potential improvements in product quality and realize efficiency gains. In addition to a lack of OT/IT connectivity, the integration of the heterogeneous test benches into existing IT and analysis systems was challenging.

Solution

Bosch Rexroth recognized the urgent need to connect test facilities more efficiently in order to make informed decisions. A successful test of i-flow’s Industrial Unified Namespace (UNS) enabled the test benches to be integrated into existing IT systems in a short space of time. i-flow ensures the seamless connection, harmonization and integration of product and quality data in Outsystems, which enables comprehensive data analysis and visualization. The implementation of i-flow provided Bosch Rexroth with the necessary flexibility to adapt to dynamic test environments and changing product requirements. By harmonizing the data from the different sources, a consistent and analyzable database was created. This enabled Bosch Rexroth to gain deeper insights into product performance and thus drive continuous quality improvements.

Realized system architecture:

Success

Benefits

The introduction of i-flow has enabled Bosch Rexroth to reduce downtime while increasing process efficiencies and product quality. The seamless connection and integration of test equipment provides valuable insights and new knowledge for data-driven product improvements, enabling Bosch Rexroth to respond quickly and effectively to market changes.

Results:

  • Increased efficiency: Reduced downtime during tests.
  • Quality improvement: Improved product quality through i-flow.
  • Data-driven decisions: Informed product improvements through new data-based insights.
  • Process automation: Automation and integration of various systems.
  • Error prevention: Lower error rate through precise data analysis.

Conclusion

The i-flow team is proud of the excellent results achieved in collaboration with Bosch Rexroth. This cooperation demonstrates the comprehensive potential of technical data integration for process optimization and value enhancement in the manufacturing industry.