Quality Control
It all began with a tool for production control at Wienerberger factories in five countries. Production data acquired by a local access application improved controllability of production.
However, for using such technical control system throughout the Wienerberger Group it was necessary to first embed data acquisition, database and evaluation into a better performing architecture. Wienerberger has chosen IQSOFT as its reliable partner for introducing such a data acquisition concept based on user-friendly applications and in-house discussions about appropriate structures and approaches.
Continuous Quality Control
In autumn 2004 the identification and labelling requirements for masonry units under CE-771 presented a new challenge to the project team. It had to develop a tool for quality control. The outcome was FCP, which stands for Factory Production Control. All production- and quality-relevant parameters of every single lot of bricks produced, such as the bricks’ dimension, density and strength, are collected and made evaluable throughout the entire production process.
The CE marking enables Wienerberger to allocate any brick to its production lot, store the parameters of this production and query them for as long as this is needed for CE information requirements. Owing to continuous measurements during production, and laboratory testing of the final products, Wienerberger can immediately respond to any identified deviations. Moreover, the evaluations are included in the monthly reports of some of its subsidiaries.
Roughly 80 factories in 12 countries are currently using this form of quality control, i.e. almost one third out of a total of 259 Wienerberger production facilities. About 300 users of the system can collect data in the language of their country and access evaluations whenever needed.
Open for Further Development
But this is not all. The FPC tool is easy to extend and flexible to adjust to changing requirements. It is intended to include more factories and countries and add other product groups. As well as the now primarily involved back-up bricks, the system could also include frost-proof bricks and roofing tiles in future.
The newly introduced CO2 Monitoring feature is ample proof of the system's upgradability. In merging SAP data and technical infrastructure data, we succeeded with little effort in developing a valuable tool for an operationally optimised control of buying and selling CO2 certificates.
Worldwide Standard for Quality Assurance
FPC now is a recognised standard for quality assurance within Wienerberger's production system - worldwide. This is how Wienerberger has reaffirmed its leading position in the production of bricks and has set new standards for the entire industry.
Technical Facts: Oracle Rdbms, Java/J2EE, JBoss/Tomcat, IBM WebSphere DataStage
