Vault Automation Reduces Manual Tasks and Time to Market for Bauer Compressors

About Bauer Compressors

Bauer Compressors has been manufacturing high pressure compressors for over 70 years. They are recognized as the world’s foremost innovative designer and manufacturer of high-pressure compressor systems and accessories. They specialize in the markets of high pressure breathing air products, GSA/military breathing air products, industrial air and gas products, plastics technology, natural gas, and inert gas compression.

Industry: Industrial Air Compressors

Location: Norfolk, Virginia

Website: https://www.bauercomp.com/en

The Challenge

Bauer’s commitment over the years has always been to use the latest technology, best materials, most qualified human resources and the most efficient fabrication techniques. What has upholding this commitment to their customers looked like? It has led to Bauer’s most innovative designs and most recently, an improvement in their time to market and a reduction in manual tasks.

The first step to reaching this goal was to speed up their nesting capabilities for sheet metal parts. They implemented a third party nesting solution that they hoped would meet their needs and free up time for laser programmers. However, this new program did not integrate well with their existing Vault infrastructure, which was and still is, essential to their designers. Bauer needed the integration between these two systems to be automatic and seamless, instead of the current manual process. Bauer knew that implementing automation technology would enable them to keep up with their evolving business goals.

“We have saved way more time than it cost to put the automation in place even a few months after the project was completed.”

Michael Lerch
CAD Systems Administrator at Bauer Compressors

The Solution

Bauer found KETIV through their free weekly webinar series, KETIV Virtual Academy (KVA) on YouTube. This is where they were introduced to automation and decided to approach KETIV with their problem.

KETIV created automation that works with Vault Professional using coolOrange’s Powerjobs Extension, this automation passes files of specific sheet metal parts to a location specified by Bauer. The file is then picked up by their external nesting software to be used during the cutting process for the part. This functionality is triggered on specific lifecycle transitions in Vault, which guarantees that the correct version of these parts are being manufactured. Prior to the integration, the program would attempt to look at all files and revisions, causing both it and Vault to crash.

The Result

Bauer was able to automate their nesting capabilities and free up time for their laser programs and move onto other projects. Michael Lerch, CAD Systems Administrator said, “We have saved way more time than it cost to put the automation in place even a few months after the project was completed.” Bauer’s overall goal of implementing new technology and automating processes has enabled system connection with nesting software improving their time to market.

What’s Next

Bauer has enjoyed collaborating with KETIV, where the automation solution was built, to make sure it met the requirements of the organization. Bauer is taking another look at their technology pool and manual tasks to continue to automate and integrate processes across the organization.

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