About Siemens

Siemens, based in Berlin and Munich, is a global company with a focus on electrification, automation and digitization. With over 379,000 employees in 190 countries (118,000 of them in Germany alone) and annual sales of 83 billion euros (FY 2017/2018), the listed group is one of the largest companies in the world.

At a glance

customer
Siemens AG
branch
Industry, Energy management, Health Care
project
3D-Control cabinet configurator
solution
Configurators / 3D solutions
technologies
CadClick, easyKAT®, React.js

Result in brief

  • Visual (3D) components significantly reduce the error rate in the configuration of control cabinets
  • Relief of the sales department by "outsourcing" the configuration to the customer
  • Significant reduction of processing times thanks to an integrated process chain

The challenge

The product portfolio of configurable control cabinets at Siemens is extremely complex and varied.
More than 90 housings and 2,000 accessories present a challenge for every configuration. When looking for experts for 3D solutions and configurators, Siemens finally turned to Plan Software. Not only the Siemens sales staff, but also the customers themselves should be able to configure complete control cabinets. But the more complex the task, the more error-prone the entire process is, which is why visual feedback is almost essential in this task. Normal configurators (without 3D components) lack this comprehensive control instance. If the process chain is not consistent and data has to be re-entered over and over again, the error rate increases again. But that's not all:  A customer wanting recesses in the side panels of the cabinet, still had to send a „completely analog“ paper sketch to the factory, resulting in an even higher workload for everyone involved.

The solution

To implement the project, Plan Software, as the responsible service provider, worked closely with the "Siemens Competence Center for Configuration" and the Siemens division "Infrastructure & Cities Sector - Low and Medium Voltage Division - Low Voltage & Products". Together with our technology partner KiM and other Siemens departments, six locations were interlinked in an agile project. The 3D control cabinet configurator, which was seamlessly integrated into the existing system infrastructure, facilitates configuration for both sales staff and customers. The final product is visualized realistically, can be viewed from all sides and can be adapted according to one's own wishes - right up to the color design and special requests such as breakouts. The control cabinet configurator was presented at SPS IPC Drives in November 2018 in Nuremberg. It was officially put into operation for the Hanover Fair in April 2019.

we solved it.

With the 8MF control cabinet configurator, we wanted to achieve a sustainable improvement in the ordering process for customers, sales and production. We succeeded in doing this very well.

Andreas Berschneider, Head of Online Marketing,