Mr. Michels, what is your assessment of 'Eplan Experience' around one and a half years after its launch?

We are surprised by the resounding effect of the program itself. Users recognize the need to standardize their engineering in order to work more efficiently. They are asking for concrete guidelines on how to proceed, and the strategy program delivers these. Relevant standards and specifications such as IEC 81346 play an important role here. Clients require their service providers and suppliers to comply with these standards, thereby triggering a change process. This is where companies need support that a pure software supplier cannot offer.
Our customer events on this topic also reflect the high demand: over 8oo participants took part in our 'Efficiency Days' last year, in which we present the content and specific guidelines on how to proceed in the fields of action.

Which companies with which problems are interested in the guidelines?

In mechanical and plant engineering, the challenge often lies in the interaction between sales, engineering and production. The different perspectives on the company's own portfolio and the lack of data consistency alone pose enormous challenges for the departments and processes downstream of sales. Joint product structuring is therefore an absolute must. Only if the information transferred from sales can be easily transferred to engineering on the basis of common standards - keyword product variants and options - can consistent project management be implemented right through to production. This shared view of the portfolio is often the challenge in large companies today.

However, users acting as service providers or suppliers also have a strong interest in leveraging potential in their own engineering. They are often involved in extensive projects and are confronted with greatly increased requirements in terms of norms, standards, quality and short project planning times. Working for different clients in particular makes it difficult to standardize one's own working environment. The challenge here is to define flexible standards and to choose the right setup for your own working environment. The different settings for working in a client-specific environment alone are a challenge.

What experiences have you had with the implementation of 'Eplan Experience'?

It turns out that it takes a certain amount of time for the topics or areas of activity to reach the market via the various communication channels and take effect. We have recognized this and are consciously focusing on sustainable implementation of the optimization ideas. The actual implementation also takes time, as some established working methods have to be reconsidered and gradually adapted. Cross-divisional topics in particular take a long time to implement. Users have placed particular focus on the areas of norms & standards, design methods and, in the last six months, increasingly on the topic of product structuring. Although product structuring is a customer-specific process, it can be standardized very well if we give the customer the right impetus.

Which area causes companies the most problems?

It's impossible to say in general terms - but the area of norms and standards is certainly a challenging topic. It is important to understand comprehensive and sometimes abstract specifications in the form of standards - implementing them in your own company is then a completely different task. In international markets in particular, this is almost impossible to achieve without support.

What are your plans for the future?

We have made it our mission to implement the potential and possibilities that lie in 'Eplan Experience' for our customers in the long term. Sometimes less is more. It doesn't mean less efficiency or less optimization, but rather gradual implementation at a 'healthy' pace, which in turn leads to sustainable and future-proof implementation. Nothing makes less sense than standardization projects coming to a standstill halfway through because task packages are too large or milestones too powerful. We therefore want to roll out the fields of action step by step.