Preh GmbH (Preh), a premier automotive electronics manufacturer of control systems for cars and commercial vehicles, and control units for e-mobility has selected Critical Manufacturing MES (Manufacturing Execution System) as the global solution to upgrade its current production systems. Critical Manufacturing MES will be implemented across all areas of production including mold injection, painting, SMT/SMD, assembly lines and packaging and shipping. It will integrate with equipment, ERP and other systems to provide real-time quality control and greatly enhanced production efficiency.
Mr. Zhengxin “Charlie” Cai, CEO of Preh, commented, “The Critical Manufacturing MES is an important part of our broader digitalization strategy. Having a single, integrated control solution will help us drive production efficiency, quality and flexibility to new levels and will provide complete visibility of our operations to support strategic decision making. It’s an important step towards smart manufacturing and will help us maintain our position as a leading supplier of innovative automotive control solutions for the next generation of vehicles.”
The MES will initially be implemented across six Preh sites in China, Germany, Mexico, Portugal and Romania. By providing tight integration of all applications and physical manufacturing systems, it will significantly increase the level of automation, improve the speed of production, reduce errors and, through reduced manual interventions, optimize the utilization of Preh resources.
Francisco Almada-Lobo, CEO at Critical Manufacturing said, “We are delighted that Preh has selected Critical Manufacturing for this important global implementation. Our strong product focus and domain experience in the electronics industry means that Preh will have much of the functionality it needs ‘out of the box’. The modular, extensible and open architecture of the system means it can be easily adapted to their specific business and individual site needs.”
By bringing all manufacturing data together in a single system, Preh will benefit from complete visibility of corporate-wide KPIs. The MES will provide deep insight into processes to support continuous improvements. Having a clear picture of all manufacturing processes, without any communication gaps, will enable Preh to quickly identify and resolve any production issues, and provide greater agility to reschedule production to fully optimize capacity.
Peter Jusko, Director Global Manufacturing at Preh, said, “We were looking for a system that would truly bring our systems and data together, give us complete global visibility and provide an architecture ready for Industry 4.0 implementation. We were impressed with the capability of the system and the detailed information provided by Critical Manufacturing during our selection process. The new MES has clearly been designed to meet the needs of sophisticated electronics manufacturing and will enable us to work as a united global production team across all our sites.”
Almada-Lobo continued, “The detailed evaluation undertaken by Preh in their MES selection process put us in a strong position. The strength of our MES is that it provides a platform for Industry 4.0 transformation success, incorporating the most modern technologies with inherent agility and flexibility to allow manufacturers to easily adapt to market changes and technological advances. We look forward to helping Preh build their production capabilities to meet all their future needs.”
Jusko said, “The system will remove the need for paper processes and many manual tasks. It is highly configurable yet easy to use and, alongside rich standard functionality, provides us with the flexibility we need to adjust to our internal roadmap and timelines.”
The MES will provide real-time analytics and full traceability across all manufacturing processes. Users will receive correct, timely information with clear dashboards and easy to use reporting to enable informed, fast and faultless execution.
Alongside the global MES implementation, Critical Manufacturing is further providing Preh with support for the creation of a Center of Excellence that will become responsible for the MES roadmap inside the Preh organization.
Jusko concluded, “With the fast pace of change in the automotive industry, the Critical Manufacturing MES will free us to further innovate and provide leading control solutions for the next era in mobility.”
