The independent, family-owned company GEMÜ Gebr. Müller Apparatebau GmbH & Co. KG is an international technology leader in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. GEMÜ valves also handle a wide range of requirements in other industries: depending on the application, they can be controlled extremely precisely, withstand chemically aggressive substances or are particularly easy to clean. Combined with other factors such as connection type or RFID chips for traceability, customers can choose from thousands of products with millions of different variants.

In the previous processes, this diversity presented a challenge: customers filled out a requirements sheet to the best of their knowledge, detailing parameters such as medium, flow rate, connections and others. In order to define a specific product group and suitable components from this data, the responsible sales representatives needed a great deal of technical expertise and production knowledge. Nevertheless, their product pre-selection had to be checked for plausibility and technical feasibility by the Design department.

As digital support, the design experts had access to queries and formulas in Microsoft Access – for example, to determine the final dimensions. GEMÜ had also been using Solidworks for years, among other things to create 2D drawings for customer presentations. 3D views for visual product verification or simulation were not possible in Solidworks, and the CAD data could only be used for the CNC milling machines in production.

GEMÜ consistently invests in modern production machinery and expands its machine park in line with the company’s growth. Modern machines rely on comprehensive geometric data from 3D models. This meant that the time was ripe for advanced, end-to-end data utilization – and process automation that relieves the burden on Design and Sales. As an established solution for design automation in the Solidworks environment, Tacton Design Automation was an obvious choice. And the Tacton specialists from Lino GmbH were already well known to GEMÜ’s project heads.

Concurrently with the rollout of a design automation solution fully integrated in Solidworks and the joint creation of the rule set, Lino also handled the training of key users. They were challenged to use Tacton directly in the production system so that they could rapidly experience for themselves how automation relieves them of recurring and time-consuming design tasks. The acceleration of variant configuration has proved massive: the time previously required to create individual inventory products has been dramatically reduced. Today, four product models can completed in the same time it used to take for one – including all data for production simulation.

High-turnover valve models were also prepared for Sales in a timely manner. To this end, Lino implemented the Tacton Configurator solution together with add-ons developed in-house. This combination not only provides Sales with meaningful 3D models and drawings for presentation to the customer, but also a rule-based product configuration, price and quotation (CPQ) functionality.

As a result, response times to customer inquiries have been minimized: the software clarifies technical feasibility automatically, and in the event of conflicts, it immediately generates solution proposals. This has massively accelerated the process up to quote generation, and customers receive a reliable response including a 3D model and drawing after just a few minutes – instead of waiting days or weeks.

www.gemu-group.com

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