That’s why the company has made daily shopfloor meetings second-nature. Every day at 2 p.m., at the changeover from early to late shift, all staff from the different production islands gather together. “In the past, we only gave oral reports about the previous 24 hours,” recalls Pöckl, adding: “Of course, these reports were highly subjective and sometimes incomplete.” And the handwriting in the written reports was difficult to read, with no chance for digital evaluation. “We had a rough idea of what had occurred and were able to optimize here and there, but we were a long way from certain knowledge,” he says.

That all changed suddenly in 2020 with the introduction of the HEIDENHAIN StateMonitor software for the milling machines on the RO-RA shop floor. “Every employee has access to StateMonitor at his machine and therefore a clear overview of his project’s status. A large screen with an overview of the machines is now present at every shopfloor meeting,” says Stefan Holzleithner, describing the visible changes to the shop floor. The workflows at the now 11 milling centers have changed as well: “We now track all machine messages, which allows us to describe and comment on every machine interruption,” says Holzleithner. “But this is only required when a machine is down for longer than 30 minutes,” adds Pöckl.