More About the Project
Before beginning their digital transformation journey, Arca Continental relied on their ERP system to generate monthly asset performance reports. The management of assets was administered from these results indicators, which naturally caused the organization to take a reactive approach to day-to-day incidents. Additionally, these Key Performance Indicators (KPI) were difficult for stakeholders to access and interpret due to a lack of context and minimal knowledge regarding business rules for operational systems. While Arca Continental faced challenges identifying their pain points, management was also taking more time to make assertive decisions based on the available data, which resulted in room for improvement in overall productivity and cost-efficiency.
Arca Continental selected Engineering Industries eXcellence as the ideal strategic partner to identify the right Asset Performance Management and Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) solutions for implementation across their global production sites. In conjunction with business intelligence, Engineering IndX used available sources of data from the customer’s SAP ERP system to shape a tailored strategy that best aligned with Arca Continental’s business drivers. Collaboration with key stakeholders led our experts to determine that solutions from Siemens’ innovative product portfolio would be the most effective to meet their operational needs, and after approval from the customer, implementation began at the customer’s main site in Mexico.
Leveraging Siemens Opcenter Execution Process (SIMATIC IT UAPI) software, our experts enabled Arca Continental to monitor, control and manage all the activities, resources and works-in-progress across their enterprise during production. Next, our team implemented Siemens MindSphere to monitor the usage and performance of Arca Continental’s assets within their facilities. As a result, plant managers and operators could ensure optimized resource utilization, minimizing the costs of energy and materials, and preventing bottlenecks and quality issues during production. Finally, our specialists leveraged Siemens Opcenter Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) software to integrate different sources of operational data from their ERP systems, for the purpose of deeper analytics, reporting, visual summaries and data sharing between enterprise-level and shop-floor systems. Thanks to the collaboration of our teams in the U.S. and Mexico for this Industry 4.0 initiative, Arca Continental has a new digital ecosystem to revolutionize production data and asset management.
IndX Advantage
IndX brought three things to this engagement that most system integrators can't.
First, genuine Siemens depth. As a long-standing Siemens Digital Industries partner specializing in digital manufacturing, IndX didn't need to learn the platform on Arca Continental's time. The team arrived with production-proven implementation patterns for Opcenter, Insights Hub and Manufacturing Intelligence - and adapted them to 45 facilities of varying sizes and processes without starting from scratch at each site.
Second, cross-border delivery. With teams based in both the US and Mexico, IndX could work directly with Arca Continental's North American and Latin American operations simultaneously - the same implementation standards, the same technical team, across every timezone and every plant.
Third, a commitment past go-live. The engagement didn't end at deployment. IndX continues to support Arca Continental's digital transformation journey, which means the platform evolves as their operations do - not locked to a version from the day it was installed.
For manufacturers operating at scale across multiple sites and regions, that combination of platform depth, delivery reach and long-term partnership is what makes the difference between a successful pilot and an enterprise transformation.
