Until now, standard practice in glass factories was to record things like replacements of cutting wheels on paper and file the information away. Meanwhile, a sister factory in another country might be doing the same thing using Excel spreadsheets. This isn’t just time-consuming and error-prone. It also prevents glass manufacturers from performing evaluations across factories that would tell them, for example, that cutting wheels are being replaced much more frequently at Factory A than at Factory B.

This is where the Recorder app from Grenzebach comes in. Events can be entered into individually definable input masks – for example, on a tablet and also via QR code – directly at the machine and supplemented with timestamps, images, videos, and PDFs. Other benefits include faster and more accurate recording of data, the ability to share data, and even the possibility of automated evaluations based on self-defined criteria. The Recorder app is especially useful for companies in which regulations require that they record increasing amounts of data. Often, the real advantage doesn’t become apparent until years later, when liability or warranty questions arise and the potential evidence of a defect is close at hand.

Grenzebach and Siemens are now collaborating on marketing apps for the first time. Thanks to Grenzebach’s flexibly configurable Recorder app, the often time-consuming and error-prone recording of data in paper lists or Excel spreadsheets is no longer necessary in the industrial environment or beyond. The digital helper can be downloaded both from Grenzebach’s own Sericy platform and from the Siemens Industrial Edge Marketplace. It’s an example of how the two companies are abandoning their traditional roles as customer and supplier and approaching the market as partners.