Superior Quality and Efficiency Thanks to a Clear Focus

With around 60 employees, ZI Jena is one of the leading sheet metal processing companies in the region. The production of device housings, frames and surfaces, for example, is carried out both manually and by mechanical CNC processes. The range of services extends from design, laser processing and forming to coating and assembly of complex sheet metal assemblies in small, medium and large series.

Customers justifiably place high demands on the safety and quality of the products – and so the requirements that the Jena-based company has to meet are correspondingly strict. More than half of the products are supplied to customers in the medical technology sector, where 100 percent inspections of entire production sequences are part of everyday life. The aviation industry, on the other hand, requires new samples of components at two to three-year intervals, and accounts for about 15 percent of outgoing goods. ZI Jena supplies a further 15 percent of its products to the semiconductor industry, with the remaining share being accounted for by ceiling production for the parent company.

In order to fulfill the high quality requirements described above and to document them reliably, an enormous amount of time and personnel is required, as the example of part approval process shows. As a basis for the initial sample inspection report, the employees responsible previously stamped all CAD drawings themselves, transferred the corresponding dimensions by hand into an Excel spreadsheet and added the respective tolerances there. Since there are usually several hundred characteristics per drawing, this process sometimes took a whole day – for each individual initial sample. In view of the continuously growing product variety, this led to an ever-increasing workload.

The main focus when introducing QM software was therefore initially to reduce the manual effort involved in stamping CAD drawings and the part approval process based on them. Further software modules will then be added step by step. There are two main reasons for this approach at ZI Jena, which are likely to apply in a similar way to many medium-sized companies with relatively small quality departments: on the one hand, the small number of employees in quality assurance should not be overwhelmed by the introduction of too many modules at once. On the other hand, the company wants to ensure that the modules already in use are working smoothly before expanding the range of functions.

One of the most important arguments in favor of the Babtec software was that its modular structure supports precisely this approach. In addition, the intuitive operability and the recommendations of several customers ensured that BabtecQ was able to prevail over both its competitors and the QM module of the ERP solution already in use at the company.

The process improvements that have been achieved through the targeted use of the “Part Approval Process” module in combination with Babtec's self-developed CAD integration are immense: All drawing dimensions are now automatically stamped, and the software then recognizes what type of dimensions they are and what tolerances are present in each case. These values can then be transferred directly into the initial sample inspection report. In this way, ZI Jena was not only able to reduce the time required for stamping a CAD drawing and creating the initial sample inspection report from one day to 10 to 20 minutes: the effort required for quality assurance has decreased by about 50 percent. Since the data is no longer transferred manually, the risk of errors has also decreased significantly and the inspection process as a whole has become much clearer.

Further efficiency increases are already in the works thanks to the planned expansion of additional modules and functions. In addition to the update to the new Babtec 8 software generation, work is also being done on the introduction of the module for in-production inspection. The initial implementation of the software for Part Approval Process and CAD integration has created a solid foundation for this, since, on the one hand, the functioning of the software as such is ensured and, furthermore, it already has a data master that can be used as a basis for gradually expanding the range of functions.

The decision to implement the Babtec modules step by step has already paid off: everyone involved enjoys working with the software and the time saved in the part approval process is clearly noticeable. From the quotation phase to the training and the actual implementation and beyond, Babtec has proven to be a reliable partner. ZI Jena can therefore look forward to the planned implementation of further modules with optimism – and perhaps prove to be a role model for other medium-sized companies.