With more than 6,000 employees, the Hirschvogel Automotive Group is one of the largest automotive suppliers operating worldwide in the forging of steel and aluminum. In this machine-intensive production, maintenance has a direct impact on delivery reliability. In 2018, long response times for maintenance and a heavy dependence on external service providers were holding the company back. By fully digitalizing maintenance with Operations1, Hirschvogel has cut downtime in its international plants by 60% and saves €250,000 per site on service provider costs.
Key Takeaways
Hirschvogel Automotive Group, automotive (forging of steel and aluminum)
Digital maintenance based on Total Productive Maintenance, later expanded to other areas
60% less downtime in the international plants
€250,000 saved per site by relying less on external service providers
50% fewer process deviations
The Starting Point
In the automotive supply industry, every hour of machine downtime costs money and puts delivery commitments to customers at risk. That made the two challenges Hirschvogel faced in 2018 all the more serious: maintenance work took too long to complete, and many tasks could only be covered by external service providers. Both led to high costs.
The causes ran deeper. Maintenance was planned in Excel, documentation was on paper with little standardization, and many manual data transfers were needed between systems. The knowledge of how to carry out maintenance correctly depended on individual employees. And anyone who later wanted to trace which maintenance had been done, when and how, had to dig through paper records.
Many companies with several plants will recognize this situation: as long as knowledge sits with a few people and processes are spread across paper and Excel, it is impossible to shorten response times or enforce consistent standards across all sites. For Hirschvogel, it was clear that a fundamental rethink was needed.
The Path to the Solution
Rethinking Maintenance
With Operations1, Hirschvogel digitalized all of its maintenance processes in line with Total Productive Maintenance. Excel planning, paper documentation and manual data transfer were replaced by a fully digital maintenance approach on a cloud-based platform. Three levers made the difference:
Process knowledge in real time: Standardized digital maintenance instructions provide knowledge where it is needed. This allows a wider group of people to carry out maintenance tasks instead of relying on a few specialists or external service providers.
Digital planning instead of Excel: The planning functionality in Operations1 ensures efficient flow of information and reduces manual planning effort.
Collaborative troubleshooting: Deviations and faults are recorded directly from the process and resolved together.
From One Area to a Platform
Today, Operations1 is used at 8 sites worldwide and in several languages. Its multilingual capabilities make it possible to roll out consistent maintenance standards across all international plants while still giving every employee instructions in their own language.
The Results
60% less downtime in the international plants: Because a wider group of people can now take on maintenance tasks, response times are significantly shorter, a key factor for delivery reliability.
€250,000 saved per site: Hirschvogel is reducing its costs for external service providers because its own employees handle more tasks themselves.
50% fewer process deviations: Standardized digital processes have replaced the previous, poorly standardized paper documentation.
"Thanks to Operations1, we work more cost-efficiently and increase our competitiveness," says Dr. Alfons Hätscher, CFO of Hirschvogel Holding GmbH.
A lot has also changed in the day-to-day work of the maintenance team. Completed maintenance can now be traced in great detail. This makes audits much easier and gives the team time for value-adding work instead of documentation and searching for records.
The most important effect is probably the platform effect. Following its success in maintenance, Hirschvogel introduced Operations1 in many other areas, including quality control, logistics, shift handover, production, health and safety, and training. What was once a fragmented, paper-based process landscape has become a central platform for employee-driven processes, used today by more than 1,500 Hirschvogel employees worldwide.
About Hirschvogel
The Hirschvogel Automotive Group is one of the largest automotive suppliers operating worldwide in the forging of steel and aluminum and employs more than 6,000 people. The group is headquartered in Denklingen, Upper Bavaria, Germany.
Machine-intensive forming technology places high demands on equipment availability and maintenance. As a supplier to the automotive industry, Hirschvogel must also meet strict requirements for delivery reliability, quality and audit readiness.