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HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co.
Lighting Business Division
HELLA is a global, independent, family-owned company that
employs some 32,000 members of staff at over 100 locations in more than 35 countries. The HELLA Group specializes in innovative lighting systems and vehicle electronics. As a technology leader for over one hundred years, HELLA has been a significant partner to the automotive industry and the aftermarket. With annual sales of around 5.8 billion Euros in the fiscal year 2014/2015, the HELLA Group is among the top 40 automotive suppliers in the world. The range of products offered by the Lighting Division includes headlights,
multifunction lamps, interior lights and lighting electronics, which are produced at the production sites in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Mexico and China. Especially with regard to fullLED headlamps, HELLA holds a position as a leader in the market and in Europe alone, it holds a market share of more than 60 percent.
"With HYDRA we have found an MES whose standard version already supports a huge part of our production processes. The
consistent use of the system helps us to successively achieve more stable processes and higher productivity"
Dr. Jan Niestadtkötter, Project Manager Production, Lighting Business Division, HELLA KGaA Hueck & Co.
HYDRA Success Story
Task and Solution
A comprehensive Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was to be introduced as a supplement to the shop floor. The MES was supposed to cover a variety of production areas (e. g. plastic injection molding, painting and packing locations) in one system.
After extensive market research and a successful pilot project at the production location in Lippstadt, the Lighting Business Division is now introducing MPDV’s integrated MES system HYDRA step-by-step and around the world. In the final stage, around 700 workplaces and machines of various types and manufacturers will be connected to HYDRA. HELLA’s main focus will be on collecting and processing shop floor and machine data. Process data as well as the central
administration and automatic use of DNC configuration data will supplement the scope of functions on relevant machines. Basic order data and master data for the machinery will be downloaded using the certified interface from the leading SAP ERP system.
As an example, the operator can conclude, based on longer downtimes without an assigned disturbance reason, that the employees in question need to be reminded once again of the necessity of these messages. After just a brief introduction period at HELLA, the system painted a clear picture of the real 24-hour production performance as well as the main interference factors.
In addition to the entry dialogs customized for HELLA to improve operating ergonomics, the large number of big screens with real time information are evidence of the intensive use of the MES HYDRA in everyday production. HYDRA depicts multi-level orders in addition
to Kanban processes and automatically generates master reports
as well as management status reports.
Especially during the introduction phase, the business division utilized flexibly configured KPIs in HYDRA to show how the MES is already being used consistently.
One thing worth noting about HELLA is that the automotive
supplier itself has equipped other divisions and sites with HYDRA on its own. HELLA implemented the roll-out with a central core team from Lippstadt, an international MES-IT corporate department and a group of local experts at each particular production site. An integral part of each roll-out was the need for all participants in the project to attend relevant HYDRA training sessions at MPDV. This guarantees that each
site is able to maintain HYDRA itself after the system goes live. In this regard, HELLA benefits from the international MPDV offices in the United States and in China, which offer HYDRA trainings in the national language.
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