Smart Factory for water meters

The aim of Lorenz, the leading German manufacturer of flow meters, was to realise a new, efficient production of intelligent wireless water meters which, in conjunction with networked water supply and billing, would improve Lorenz's market opportunities. A new production line was to be set up together with SF sister company ITQ to manufacture this new generation of water meters. Software Factory took over the necessary new development of the fully integrated production control and line system.

Lorenz wanted to network the data structures in the company in terms of production technology in such a way that both the parameters in production and the data security and encryption of the product data could be digitally controlled. The challenge was to integrate the different IT system environments and to standardise the new forms of decentralised information provision from the planning to the shop floor level.

Following the analysis phase at Lorenz, ITQ and Software Factory were tasked with developing the best possible combination of digitalisation, shop floor management, production planning, material flow control and plant automation. The cornerstones of the system today are customised ERP and MES applications including Scada functionalities and augmented reality scenarios.