Stable alloy, strong partnership!

Otto Junker founded the company of the same name in 1924 in Lammersdorf, some 20 kilometers south of Aachen. In the decades that followed, the initially purely technical company developed into a reliable partner for the international foundry industry. The most important ingredients for success: an unquenchable thirst for innovation, dedicated employees and progressive partners - just like MAIT. The digitalization experts have already revolutionized Otto Junker's design practice several times.

We understand metals. This is the confident welcome Otto Junker GmbH offers visitors to its website. The manufacturer of castings and equipment for foundries has every reason to be proud - after all, it has been in business for almost 100 years. Throughout this long period, the long-established company based in Simmerath-Lammersdorf, south of Aachen, has always set itself the same high standard: to be the innovation and technology leader for the thermal processing and foundry industries.

And today? Today, the industrial furnace designer is also successful worldwide in the aluminum, copper and semi-finished products industries and is considered an outstanding specialist in stainless steel casting. In addition to the latest technologies, Otto Junker relies on the expertise of its 450 employees, an in-house research and development department and cooperation with RWTH Aachen University to achieve growing success on the global market.

MAIT adds a third dimension

Just as Otto Junker sets high standards of innovation and reliability for its partners, it also sets high standards for itself. MAIT is an excellent example of this. As a digitalization specialist, MAIT has been helping metal experts to bring product development into the modern age for a quarter of a century. In the mid-1990s, Otto Junker introduced Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP software for resource planning in addition to 2D product development. At that time, MAIT integrated the first software solutions for efficient document and product management and linked the existing ERP with the 2D CAD program via a specially programmed interface.

This was state of the art in the nineties, the leap from the drawing board to the screen not so long ago. At the beginning of the new millennium, however, it quickly became clear that Otto Junker's design engineers urgently needed to introduce another dimension. This was the only way the company could meet the increasingly complex demands of its customers and live up to its reputation as an innovation leader. Once again, MAIT came up with the right plan. In less than six months, the company was using the Siemens NX 3D CAD software solution company-wide, with all the speed and quality benefits of 3D. The rapid implementation was made possible by the Junker project team.

Where all the threads come together

Today, 15 years later, Siemens NX is the hub of many activities. "Nevertheless, many casting machines still run exclusively on the basis of two-dimensional data, which will still play an important role in the company in 2020," explains Thomas Strauch, who is still the IT project manager at Otto Junker. But how can the different formats and representations of different generations be reconciled? The answer to this question also came from Siemens, or more precisely from 'Teamcenter'. Thanks to MAIT, the product lifecycle management system has served Otto Junker since the introduction of NX as a central tool for managing all product and process knowledge, regardless of data format or user location. MAIT has been a certified Siemens Platinum Smart Expert Partner for many years and knows what the software can achieve through seamless integration with existing IT systems: "Teamcenter truly stores all data about geometry, structures, product development, manufacturing and maintenance, and this data can be shared at any time. Teamcenter is the glue that holds everything together," says Helmut Pietsch, Head of Consulting CAD and Training Business Unit Siemens at MAIT. The benefits are higher quality, lower costs, increased productivity and modularization. Design engineers no longer have to sit in front of a large drawing. Instead, they can contribute their own piece of the puzzle, which later fits together with all the others to form the big picture.

Tailor-made, individual solutions

Of course, MAIT had to migrate the 2D data into Teamcenter and also program a lot of content and interfaces individually for Otto Junker. But this is exactly one of MAIT's strengths: "We adapt existing solutions and interfaces to customer requirements or program completely new features," says Helmut Pietsch. Ralf Cremer, the Teamcenter and CAD key user responsible for engineering, thermal processing and standardization at Otto Junker, confirms this: "We are critical, have an eye for detail and like to think in scenarios. MAIT takes all this into account, defines our needs and also builds on existing processes. That's why we have been so satisfied with MAIT's services for so many years," he says. One example is the output management system known as TCeasy®. This allows PDF files to be created directly from Teamcenter from CAD drawings or Word documents. The user can also decide whether the document should be printed or exported for other purposes. MAIT has also included a very useful feature: The user can select the language in which the headings and text content of the title block of the respective CAD drawing should appear in the PDF. With a single click, 'Datum' is changed to 'Date', 'Gewicht' is changed to 'Weight' and so on. This may sound like a small detail, but for an international company like Otto Junker it makes a huge difference, making work much easier and more efficient.

The unique toolbox

Based on custom extensions like these, MAIT has over the years increasingly adapted Siemens Teamcenter to the general standards of engineering companies like Otto Junker. The result is a constantly optimized toolbox called 'TCeasy®'. It contains tools such as typical software modules, variable interfaces and patches for engineering practice. Of course, Otto Junker is not the only one who likes this pragmatic approach - for understandable reasons: "With TCeasy®, we can meet the design change requirements of almost any customer faster and more cost-effectively than if we had to reinvent the wheel every time," says Andreas Markeli, Sales Manager of the Siemens Business Unit MAIT.

The TCeasy® principle also benefits the ongoing maintenance contract between MAIT and Otto Junker. Thanks to TCeasy®, adaptation programming for existing software versions can usually be implemented quickly and easily, whereas software updates can be quite costly.

As part of the maintenance contract, Otto Junker is also entitled to the latest versions of all software modules and can always rely on the expertise of its partner, as it has done for many, many years. This is perhaps the best proof of how satisfied Otto Junker is with MAIT's services.