umati has new partner A+W Software GmbH

A+W Soft­ware GmbH is now mem­ber of the umati community.

About A+W Soft­ware GmbH

A+W is the mar­ket lead­er for soft­ware in the flat glass industry as well as in win­dow and door pro­duc­tion. We devel­op ERP, PPS and optim­iz­a­tion soft­ware to make glass and win­dow man­u­fac­tur­ers more effi­cient. Our products are suit­able for small, medi­um and large com­pan­ies. We have been in the mar­ket for over 40 years and sell our products worldwide.

Het­ero­gen­eous com­pon­ents — hol­ist­ic solutions

A+W cre­ates open man­u­fac­tur­ing worlds in which the glass and win­dow value chain con­sists of digit­ally net­worked, fully auto­mated and intel­li­gent pro­cesses. People, pro­duc­tion plants and inform­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies are increas­ingly being coordin­ated online, in real time and hol­ist­ic­ally. This enables our cus­tom­ers to refine glass and con­struc­tion ele­ments effi­ciently, cre­at­ively and sus­tain­ably and to sell them prof­it­ably. In par­tic­u­lar, we sup­port vari­ant pro­duc­tion up to batch size 1, which is stand­ard in the glass and win­dow industry. Mod­ern pro­duc­tion envir­on­ments are always net­worked sys­tems con­sist­ing of power­ful machines and intel­li­gent industry soft­ware. In the innov­a­tion net­work of glass refiners or win­dow man­u­fac­tur­ers, mech­an­ic­al engin­eers and soft­ware pro­du­cers, often het­ero­gen­eous com­pon­ents are com­bined to cre­ate integ­rated solu­tions from prac­tice for prac­tice, which are ground­break­ing for the industry.

Pro­mote cooper­a­tion — increase perception

At A+W, Dr. Klaus Mühl­hans, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Dir­ect­or in the area of Soft­ware for Glass, togeth­er with the VDMA (Ger­man Engin­eer­ing Fed­er­a­tion), is driv­ing for­ward cooper­a­tion in the devel­op­ment of stand­ard­ized cross-com­pany inter­faces. “We want to con­trib­ute to mak­ing machine com­mu­nic­a­tion between het­ero­gen­eous plants and to high­er-level sys­tems fit for the future. In this way, we make com­plex pro­duc­tion land­scapes faster, more digit­al and safer. The stand­ard­iz­a­tion of machine inter­faces in accord­ance with the OPC-UA stand­ard, which the VDMA is striv­ing for,” says Mühl­hans, “will dra­mat­ic­ally reduce the amount of work involved in set­ting up these interfaces.

What does Dr. Mühl­hans expect from umati?

“We would like”, explains Mühl­hans, “to make our par­ti­cip­a­tion in the VDMA and espe­cially in the glass-spe­cif­ic Com­pan­ion Spec pub­lic on a broad­er level. Umati pro­motes cooper­a­tion and makes it vis­ible. As a res­ult, we expect a broad­er, more sus­tain­able accept­ance for the spe­cific­a­tions that have been developed”. Klaus Mühl­hans advoc­ates a cross-industry cooper­a­tion and the expan­sion of umati to the entire machine industry. “Cross-industry cooper­a­tion is essen­tial, espe­cially in the area of inter­faces. A large part of the data to be defined / exchanged is uni­ver­sal and should there­fore be uniform”.