Case Study Bamberger Kaliko GmbH Lean and reliable production data Âmanagement by noax Industrial PCs in textile finishing
noax Industrial PCs in the textile finishing industry at Bamberger Kaliko GmbH
Innovations determine the future Bamberger Kaliko is the biggest German exporter and market leader in Europe for book binding cloth. Throughout the company’s long history, Bamberger Kaliko has always understood how to achieve groundbreaking progress by combining tradition with innovation. By remaining loyal to it’s Franconian base, the company has bucked the trend in the industry for outsourcing to lowcost countries. In 1988, the company moved from the centre of Bamberg to the BambergKramersfeld industrial zone, where it invested in a new, larger factory with state of the art machinery. Today, more than 175 employees process textiles and fabrics according to the special individual requirements of a broad range of international customers. The company’s future is no longer restricted to the stagnating market for classic book binding: The latest collections from Bamberger Kaliko include cinema screens, materials for the graphics sector, printing blankets, fire protection textiles for buildings, securing fabrics for “We need extremely durable transportation, lamp computer systems designed shade materials, base for extreme environments.” materials for adhesive tapes and many other innovative hi-tech textiles. Thousands of metres of fabric are processed in rolls that weigh more than a ton and wide-surface webs.
Perfect process chains are essential for the market leader “Textile finishing is not an electronics-friendly environment,” explains Uwe Wiesel from the IT division of the company when describing the ambient conditions in the production halls. “Depending on the process, heat, dust and high levels of humidity create a permanent film of
dirt on the devices.” This presents a particular challenge for Uwe Wiesel and the IT team: “We require extremely durable and robust computer systems that are designed for extreme ambient conditions and can be operated perfectly even with thick protective gloves.” Hand-written labels, formulas or worklists? The PC has featured in the production halls of the market leader from Bamberg for a long time. A modern ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system controls the business processes. On-site
way, IT ensures end-to-end processes: These include material acquisition in the reception store, activities in the washing plant and the transfer of formulas to the paste mixing facility and order-specific instructions for cutting and sizing. Another advantage of the IT system is that traceability at batch level is ensured for many safety-relevant hi-tech textiles.
noax IPCs: Optimised for extreme environments
In the beginning, Kaliko used simple two line displays with a RS-422 connection for data collection. The data was saved on PCs and then transferred to the server at intervals. The next step was to use conventional Windows PCs for data entry and output for production – unfortunately, a strategy that was highly error-prone. In the washing and paste mixing areas in particular, the IT department had to clean the PC hardware that was only designed for office environments or completely replace individual components at regular intervals. Frequent stoppages had an increasingly negative effect on production and lead to acceptance problems amongst employees. A new IT concept was planned and the consultants of the IT partner of Bamberger Kaliko, Lunz Computersysteme GmbH, recommended high quality Industrial PCs from noax Technologies AG. The noax terminals met all the criteria for computer performance as well as handling and durability. Unlike many other Heat, humidity and dust: noax Industrial PCs companies, the experts from noax Technolohave established themselves even in the harsh gies AG focus on developing extremely robust environment of the paste mixing facility for years. Industrial PCs. Thanks to in-house development, Industrial PCs are used to transfer orders and the components and design of noax IPCs can be formulas from the ERP system to the work- optimised for long-term operation in extreme places and report back operating data. In this production environments.
Bamberger Kaliko GmbH processes textiles with colours, chemicals and additional raw materials. The roots of this company with a long tradition lie in high quality book cloth, while the future lies in hi-tech products such as pollutant-absorbing blinds, industrial textiles and fire protective fabrics. In a highly competitive market, production has to be efficient, order-specific and high quality: an ideal task for Industrial PCs from noax in spite of high heat and humidity.
Efficient order-related production can be organised with production data acquisition.
Bright displays without fault-prone external fans The design from Bamberger Kaliko pays off: noax Industrial PCs are out to the test every day in harsh continual operation. The closed design in compliance with protection standard IP65 and constructed entirely without faultprone external fans contribute to the faultless operation of the terminals. Another advantage: Extremely bright TFT displays are fitted as standard and allow materials and formulas (for
example, in the Kaliko paste mixing facility) to be read clearly from the display. This is not to be taken for granted when displays are cleaned frequently, as they get dirty quickly in damp and/or dusty environments, in addition to the fact that employees enter data wearing gloves and protective goggles. Although noax Industrial PCs are fitted with touch panels, the individual Kaliko workstations also have external keyboards and barcode scanners. An advantage of this solution is that external keyboard entries do not require the virtual keyboard on the screen leaving more space for the display. Scanners record the elements of a formula for quality control, inventory and cost accounting in the ERP system.
noax IPCs as Citrix terminals noax IPCs are configured as Thin Clients for Kaliko. This is unlike IPCs for many PDA and ERP applications. Uwe Wiesel recalls the evaluation: “Originally we had a large range of Industrial PCs in our initial selection. But only a few could be configured as Thin Clients. This was the only way we could achieve the required simplifications and cost savings for installation, administration and maintenance.” Compatibility with the existing Citrix server was also particularly important for the IT department. This was also a requirement for the low roll-out and implementation expenditure as well as simplified maintenance. In addition, all data from the production, production managers, purchase and distribution are recorded promptly in the ERP system without delay due to the intermediate storage. Some IT managers do not want to operate the high-performance noax Industrial PCs “only” as Thin Clients. In Bright displays: The operator sees all information at a glance.
the Bamberg factory, the operation of the Citrix terminal is a guarantee for a complete solution with maximum availability - for both hardware and software. A lean Linux operating system boots the noax terminals via the X-server and operation runs as a terminal server session. The user logs on at the server for each terminal session. Software problems on the Thin Client are excluded to a large extent. Even in such an event, a simple restart solves the problem. The current configuration allows client software to be installed in full in a few minutes. Uwe Wiesel can copy the same configuration of the operating system for all system enhancements, maintenance work or failures from a USB stick. Only the MAC address of the terminal must be set individually. This means that the terminal is ready for use in a very short time. noax Industrial PCs have now been in operation at Bamberger Kaliko GmbH since 2003. There were no training or adaptation problems during the changeover to the new solu“Originally, we had a large tion. The tried and range of Industrial PCs tested software was in our initial selection. familiar to the users But only a few could be and ran immediately configured as Thin Clients.” without changes on the new “Thin Client” Industrial PCs from noax. Hardware failures are now a thing of the past – a fact that everyone at Kaliko got used to quickly and with pleasure.
Bamberger Kaliko GmbH
Specifications and Applications
Overview of components
Company Profile:
Objectives:
Hardware:
The historic town of Bamberg in Franconia has been the home of Bamberger Kaliko GmbH for over 135 years. To this day, Kaliko is an expert in combining tradition and progress. The site in the industrial area of BambergKramersfeld was built in 1988 and is equipped with state of the art machinery. Around 175 employees process several thousand metres of textiles to produce sophisticated products for indoor sun protection, book cloth or technical applications.
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Comprehensive production data acquisition for production
-- Industrial PC Compact Series C12 TC
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Operation as a low maintenance Thin Client solution
-- Processor: Intel Celeron 400 MHz
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Implementation of legal conditions for batch traceability
-- Input: touchscreen and external keyboard
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igh degree of reliability of the Industrial PCs H implemented
Visit www.bamberger-kaliko.de for more information
IPC requirements: ··
Use in harsh production environments (heat, dust and humidity)
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Bright, clearly legible display
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IP54 compliant
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Connection of keyboard, barcode scanner and USB ports
-- N7A-C400TC motherboard -- 12.1 inch display -- IP54 protection class
Software: -- Operating System: Linux
© noax Technologies Case study arranged 2008
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