Technological evolution at a traditional family business

How one of the world’s leading metal band saw manufacturers is gradually expanding its traditional product portfolio to include digitalization solutions.

The goal was already clear more than a decade ago. Thomas Rehm, head of the electrical department at MEBA, knew that MEBA, as a technology leader in the field of metal band saws, would have to closely observe and evaluate developments in digitalization as well as Industry 4.0 and IIoT. As a global company with more than 50 different models, MEBA offers a diverse product portfolio ranging from standardized single saws to custom all-in-one solutions with material handling and length measurement systems in all degrees of automation. MEBA delights its customers with all-round service, i.e. everything from consultancy, planning, designing, implementing, commissioning, to spare parts and systems support. A step-by-step digitalization of its product portfolio is therefore a matter of course for MEBA in order to maintain its leading position in the global market. Working with the remote access and IIoT specialist eurogard enables MEBA to do just this in a structured and consistent manner. eurogard has been offering self-developed hardware and software solutions for remote access since 1995. Starting out with modem and rudimentary protocols, the experiences collected and knowledge gained has formed an essential part of product development, so that today eurogard can offer its customers mature and proven products. In recent years, various IIoT solutions have been added to the eurogard product portfolio. In addition to our technical expertise, other benefits such as high flexibility, cooperation based on partnership and an attractive price-performance ratio have led MEBA to work with eurogard on its digitalization strategy.

Digitalization categories of eurogard GmbH

The eurogard product portfolio offers customers two digitalization categories and a corresponding step-by-step implementation strategy.

First, eurogard offers its customers established and constantly optimized remote access solutions. Here, the eurogard ServiceRouter compact is installed in the respective machines and systems, and VPN networks are set up via the Internet or mobile network. This solution is available on-premise or via the cloud and. It benefits from simple and very fast implementation as well as its extremely attractive price-performance ratio and is thus ideally suited for entry into remote services. If desired, additional IIoT functionality can also be realized through this approach, but due to the increased data traffic via the VPN line, customers are only advised to do this in special cases. More suitable for this is the second eurogard digitalization solution described below.

The machine to value (m2v) platform and ServiceRouters V3 constitute the eurogard IIoT landscape. As with the ServiceRouter compact, the V3 can be easily installed in the relevant machines and plants. In addition to basic remote access functionality, the V3 offers in all its configurations the possibility to actively network machines and plants globally and benefit from the potentials of Industry 4.0. By integrating common industry protocols, plant connectivity can be realized easily and quickly. In addition to new plants, the V3 is also perfectly suited for retrofitting IIoT to existing machines and plants. With the eurogard ServiceRouter V3, all further digital value creation processes begin by forwarding the customer-specific data points from the connected machines to the m2v platform. m2v is at the heart of the eurogard software landscape. The m2v engine structures incoming data streams, calculates key figures, visualizes KPIs and, as a flexible system, forms the basis for all custom digital services. With m2v, eurogard customers have the tools to implement their own digital value creation strategy. As a highly integrable software, m2v combines state-of-the-art, secure technologies and enables eurogard customers to collect, process, visualize and securely access and export data from globally distributed machines and plants 24/7 from any device. This enables our customers to build valuable data sets over time, which form the basis for new customer services, product features and business models. As a high-performance multi-client software, any number of customers with unlimited edge devices (V3 routers) can be clearly, quickly and easily created and managed via m2v. m2v also offers extensive and customized machine management. Predefined machine templates allow for an easy and unrestricted instantiation of machines. Data triggers, message groups and user-specific data can be defined individually. Instantiated machines can be created via a clear tree structure and assigned to the respective customer. With the corresponding user authorizations, plant parameters can be changed and plants controlled remotely. Alarm functionality via email, SMS or the machine to pocket (m2p) smartphone app inform eurogard customers as well as their end customers within seconds about possible performance deviations. Thanks to the integrable structure of the platform, eurogard customers can implement a variety of their own B2B applications via API. Naturally our customers retain data sovereignty and can decide whether the data is stored in the cloud in Germany as standard, or as an on-premise solution on their own servers.

IT security is a top priority for all eurogard products. Thanks to hardened Linux software modules, secure VPN and SSL-encrypted communication, personalized certificate keys and individually expandable firewalls, the eurogard ServiceRouters benefit from a sophisticated security concept. Regular software updates take into account current developments and provide constant protection.

The goal was already clear more than a decade ago. Thomas Rehm, head of the electrical department at MEBA, knew that MEBA, as a technology leader in the field of metal band saws, would have to closely observe and evaluate developments in digitalization as well as Industry 4.0 and IIoT. As a global company with more than 50 different models, MEBA offers a diverse product portfolio ranging from standardized single saws to custom all-in-one solutions with material handling and length measurement systems in all degrees of automation. MEBA delights its customers with all-round service, i.e. everything from consultancy, planning, designing, implementing, commissioning, to spare parts and systems support. A step-by-step digitalization of its product portfolio is therefore a matter of course for MEBA in order to maintain its leading position in the global market. Working with the remote access and IIoT specialist eurogard enables MEBA to do just this in a structured and consistent manner. eurogard has been offering self-developed hardware and software solutions for remote access since 1995. Starting out with modem and rudimentary protocols, the experiences collected and knowledge gained has formed an essential part of product development, so that today eurogard can offer its customers mature and proven products. In recent years, various IIoT solutions have been added to the eurogard product portfolio. In addition to our technical expertise, other benefits such as high flexibility, cooperation based on partnership and an attractive price-performance ratio have led MEBA to work with eurogard on its digitalization strategy.

Implementation process at MEBA Metall-Bandsägemaschinen GmbH

The managing directors of both companies met up together with the technical managers to present and evaluate the eurogard software and hardware landscape, and discuss the implementation steps. Karl Symior, Managing Director of eurogard, has experienced the keen interest but also skepticism of medium-sized family businesses towards digitalization solutions. “Our customers want to know what concrete added value they will receive from our solutions. How will the business model change: from pure product sales to digital services? How can digitalization features be implemented? How dependent will I be on my digitalization partner? In addition to technical expertise, a foundation of trust, collaborative partnership and transparency are therefore extremely important to our customers.” After a series of strategic meetings and coordination, MEBA worked out a roadmap that saw a step-by-step digitalization of its product portfolio. For Thomas Rehm it was clear that “We wanted to gain experience first and see how good the technology is, how working with eurogard works, and how our customers react.” Starting in 2014 the first MEBA saws were equipped with basic remote access solutions.

MEBA service technicians have since been using the eurogard ServiceRouter compact to establish a remote VPN connection to their machines across the globe, making it possible to provide customers with immediate troubleshooting and support without having to be on site for every case. The remote access solution has also been very well received by MEBA customers, who can be confident to receive support very quickly and efficiently in the event of a problem. “Thanks to eurogard, we can easily perform remote diagnostics and maintenance on our machines, avoiding on-site service calls. This is extremely useful and allows us to work more efficiently and reduce costs,” Thomas Rehm explains. For maximum connectivity, MEBA usually installs Wi-Fi / LTE compact routers, so that either the LAN or Wi-Fi or cellular interface is available for connecting to the Internet.

In 2019, positive overall development led to MEBA’s decision to further advance its digitalization efforts by planning to use the first features of the eurogard m2v IIoT platform and to develop its own app. In preparation for the roll-out in 2022, MEBA saws have already been equipped with V3 ServiceRouters in recent months.

Once activated, customers will benefit from the m2v platform and the MEBA app, as both the machines and sawing tasks can be monitored more precisely, making it possible to take more proactive action. In the case of an alarm, customers can be informed within seconds via push notifications. Data from controls or sensors can be collected and displayed on web dashboards or made available to another IT system via interfaces. With m2v, error causes can be analyzed quickly and easily, enabling customers to optimize their production and processes as well as the quality of their products. The advanced remote access solution leads to a significant reduction in downtime. This has a significant impact on ROI and cost savings.

MEBA takes advantage of the m2v platform to monitor and gain insights from machine performance in the field. Data from the machines gives customers a better understanding of operational use. This helps to detect product strengths and weaknesses, which flow into the optimization and further development of the machines. Furthermore, historical data, processed in dashboards, enables faster troubleshooting during remote service, improving MEBA’s support activities. MEBA was impressed by the simple and fast technical implementation of the m2v platform. After all parameters of the machine templates have been defined, the complete installation of a eurogard router and its registration on the global eurogard IIoT platform m2v is straightforward and done within minutes. With the decision to use m2v as IIoT platform, MEBA has taken the consistent, next step in the further digitalization of its product portfolio. In the coming months, MEBA will continue to follow its digital mission statement: “Observe and evaluate new technologies and continuously incorporate what is useful for the user into our products.” For Thomas Rehm it is clear that this is just the beginning: “Thanks to eurogard, making our machines IIoT-capable is really simple. In the short term, this brings an excellent return on investment for us and our customers. In the longer term, our eurogard-equipped machines are ready to support any future IIoT projects we will be planning.”

On behalf of eurogard, technical manager Mario Cappello reinforces this approach. “We offer our customers maximum flexibility in implementing their digitalization strategy. Be it extensive, very short-cycle projects or several smaller individual projects with longer validation phases in between – the customer needs reassurance, time and capacity, and of course our solutions must be convincing. This is the only way to build ‘value-added’ customer relationships over decades.” And eurogard’s product pipeline is extensive: advanced alert monitoring, web-based display of remote devices such as touch panels, energy metering, AI-supported evaluations, to list just a few approaches, will be elements of eurogard’s remote access in the future. The m2v platform will also be used to map after-sales service processes at various levels of automation and to implement automatic report generation and distribution features. “Just as the mechanical engineer continues to develop their products, we too continue developing new IIoT functionality for our customers – sometimes proactively, often in close exchange with the customer,” says Mario Cappello. The focus is always on generating added value.