Same-day Production and Delivery of Replacement Parts

Manufacturing replacement parts and shipping them out to the customer the very same day could soon become the industry standard. Same-day production and delivery is possible if communications between production and logistics is fully automated. This was illustrated in a first-of-its-kind live demo conducted by Deutsche Post DHL in partnership with AXIT and evosoft – IT companies that are part of the Siemens family – along with Siemens Mobility, Intelligent Traffic Systems.

The live experiment was carried out during a customer event sponsored by IT service provider AXIT and viewed by more than 100 participants online and in real time on monitors set up at the venue in Frankenthal, Germany. It showed the path of an urgently needed replacement part as it moved from the initial order through production to final delivery: all in a single day. Every link in the chain – man and machine alike – worked together seamlessly in a fully automated and digital process using modern tools of digitalization such as the internet of things, cloud-based technology, and data analytics. The cloud-based IT platform AX4, operated by AXIT, served as the central “control tower.”

“The only way to illustrate the benefits of digitalization is to make them tangible and simply give new ideas a try,” remarked Frauke Heistermann, Member of the AXIT Management Board. The showcase project allowed over 100 participants from the manufacturing, commercial, and logistics sectors to watch a live demo throughout the event showing how information is shared digitally between human beings and machines and processes are perfectly synchronized.