Multidisciplinary integration of engineering

At the Dutch system integrator Hollander techniek engineers from various disciplines work together on optimal system solutions for clients in industry, the utility sector and retail. Thanks to flexible standardisation of the product spectrum in the EPLAN Engineering Center, hollander techniek is achieving considerable savings in time and costs. Hollander techniek develops client-oriented system solutions. Often complicated installations for which nothing seems “standard” at first glance. These systems depend upon highly skilled mechanical, electrical and software engineers. The seamless teamwork of these various fields makes or breaks every system.

Multidisciplinary standard

The solutions of hollander techniek are very successful, particularly in the industries water, food, manufacturing and waste processing. Nevertheless, engineering manager Henk-Jan Scholman could see room for improvement in 2003. “This was the result of frustration. I wrote software for our systems and realised that it often did not work the way we wanted it to. For example, in the case of a ‘simple’ motor for a pump, fan or conveyor, you are easily faced with dozens of parameters which all have to be correct. If you miss the slightest thing, it won’t work. The only way to solve this is to create standards that you know will work. And as electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and software programmers all work on a solution, it has to be multidisciplinary.”

Smart Database

Hollander techniek gives its engineers the room to create - with their knowledge, creativity, and personal drive - a good solution for the customer. “This personal freedom makes the work very enjoyable for the engineer, but it also makes it difficult to enforce a standard”, acknowledges Henk-Jan Scholman. “For this reason, we decided not to set down these standards in a thick book, but rather to offer the engineer a tool which gives him or her a personal advantage - ease of use. A database in which we set down all the knowledge about the subcomponents of our systems, including the choice criteria for a specific solution. Using an extremely user-friendly configurator, you click, choose and put together a solution, in terms of software, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.”

EPLAN Engineering Center

In 2006, Henk-Jan Scholman made a comprehensive appraisal of the standardised engineering platform that he imagined. “We have learned a great deal from this. What is standard? What are the dependencies? How do we actually engineer? And why? Various questions to which we have found an answer. Our electrical engineers have already been working for 15 years with the EPLAN Electric P8 software of EPLAN. In 2008, EPLAN gave a demonstration of a new tool in its portfolio: the EPLAN Engineering Center. We were astonished: “The basic concept and idea behind the Eplan Engineering Center were exactly what we were looking for. It was a 95 percent match!” We also reviewed a competitor’s solution, but the EPLAN Engineering Center offered hollander techniek much greater freedom to configure the tool according to their specific needs. “For instance, we can create a particularly simple user interface for the tool.”

Configurator

This engineering tool, which we call ’IDEA’’, is an Inter Disciplinary Engineering Application which helps engineers to select those elements they require for a solution. “I compare it with a tray of LEGO. As the blocks are small enough, you can build anything with it”, says Henk-Jan Scholman. “We work with the smallest blocks. Using these standardised mechatronic objects, we can develop millions of variations.” The information contained within the tool makes incorrect configurations impossible. The configurator is so easy to use that a junior engineer can generate a solution in one-third to one-half the time it took previously. This gives us much more flexibility to deploy our people. “The configurator filters many repetitive tasks out of the process and that allows our engineers to focus on the real challenges. Moreover, it saves a lot of time. As a result, our engineers were quickly convinced to adopt this working method.”

Engineering as production line

The configurator, in combination with EPLAN Engineering Center, has become an ‘engineering machine’. “We design and build automation solutions for our customers which replace traditional manual work with an industrial production process. The configurator does the same thing for our own engineering process. Our engineering becomes a production process. At first, people said: you can’t do that, because all our products are unique. But if our customers in manufacturing can produce thousands of variants using a single production line, so can we”, explains Henk-Jan Scholman.

Huge potential

Hollander techniek has been completing projects with ‘IDEA’ since 2013. “The configurator is already generating more benefits than we thought it would. The turnaround times in engineering are much shorter and we are much more flexible. This has also had an impact on the rest of our processes. So we shrunk our parts database from around 10.000 to 900 components. And that has resulted in logistic and purchasing benefits on components. The configurator even influences sales, as there is a clear delineation between customised work and standardised products.This offers commercial space in the sale of standard solutions. And I do not think it will stop with this. As the next step, salespeople will be using the configurator to prepare quotes. And who knows, maybe soon customers will be doing it themselves. The configurator and the standard are so flexible that companies can customise it to their specific needs. It presents an enormous potential for hollander techniek.”

Hollander techniek in a nutshell

Hollander techniek consults, designs, installs and maintains integrated technical solutions for industrial, utility and retail sectors. “We deliver added value by putting ourselves into the customer’s processes, market and competitive position,” says consultant Joost Leferink. It is important to our clients that we are ISO and CSIA certified - the latter is a new standard for system integrators in the US. But what distinguishes hollander techniek is our people. We always aim to achieve a good working solution. We only go home when it is working - a perfect end result is what counts for us.”