key findings
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Customer pain points : the original quality management system is not unified, and the overall framework needs to be upgraded; it is difficult to coordinate and unify the time window for multiple production bases to carry out shutdown reconstruction.
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Solution : Use Siemens Mendix low-code to develop an upgraded version of the quality management system, without waiting for downtime, hot deployment solves the difficulty of coordinated deployment of multiple production bases.
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Implementation effect : In the past, multiple production base shutdown windows were required, and IT was deployed overnight; now there is no need to shut down, and maintenance, upgrades, and application deployment can be realized at any time. The production department is completely indifferent to system deployment, minimizing the impact of maintenance and upgrades on the business department.
"1+4" digital transformation, digging into key business applications
You may remember that we published a customer story about SAIC Passenger Cars using the Mendix low-code development platform to develop and launch a series of applications in August last year: Leading the era of innovation, low-code empowers traditional automobile manufacturers to lead the way Ecology (click to review) .
Today, it is necessary for us to spend a separate space to talk about the QMS and quality management system in detail, because this is one of the core application systems of SAIC Passenger Vehicles and plays an important role. The Mendix team recently interviewed Sheng Fei, the QMS product manager of SAIC Passenger Vehicles , and made an in-depth exploration of the past and present of the development of the QMS system.
Sheng Fei mentioned that before using the Mendix low-code platform to develop QMS, SAIC Passenger Vehicle mainly encountered difficulties and challenges from the following three aspects:
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It is difficult to find a unified and suitable window for base production to upgrade the overall structure. Because the upgrade of the overall structure requires the shutdown of all bases at the same time, judging from the current production situation, it is difficult for multiple bases to find such a window time.
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The on-site PDA terminal function control line of the QMS system, the user has high requirements for the operation interface. On-site manufacturing of the factory production line is most frequently used for product quality inspection. The production line has a high tempo, and users have high requirements for the operation interface, and no slightest lag is allowed.
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The unified management of each base by the headquarters requires a unified standard. Each OEM has different methods of on-site manufacturing quality management. Although there is a unified quality standard TF16949, each company has a different focus: some focus on process management, while others focus on later audits and inspections.
In order to solve these pain points, SAIC Motor decided to reconstruct the QMS system. At the beginning of choosing development tools, QMS product manager Sheng Fei and his team compared the differences between Mendix low-code development and Java high-code development. Through research and analysis, and some comparisons with obvious realistic conditions, the final choice is self-evident.
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SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicle's existing smart factory lean human resource management system and missing vehicle management system are all developed using the Mendix low-code platform, and the effect is good;
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The QMS project is based on the reconstruction of the old system and does not involve a large number of process changes. It is mainly functional iterations, and it is more efficient to use Mendix to develop;
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You can use the existing Mendix platform resources of SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicles, just buy a few more licenses, and save more;
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The development of core applications such as QMS can just take advantage of Mendix's performance in high logic.
"Low-code has provided great help in our rapid reconstruction of the QMS system. The traditional QMS system development and system stabilization time takes more than 12 months, but we have completed the QMS system launch within 3 months by using low-code. And the quality is higher, and the bug rate of development and delivery is relatively low. But through this practice, we also found that the current Mendix technology ecosystem needs further development, and there are relatively few engineers with senior Mendix development experience. In addition, the component library of Mendix needs to be further enriched .”
Mendix low-code, building a new QMS system architecture
In this context, SAIC Motor built a cloud + terminal architecture based on the new QMS system developed by Mendix low-code:
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Functions that do not affect the operation of the production line, such as simple reports and master data management, are deployed in the cloud;
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Functions such as product quality inspection that directly control the line are deployed at the edge.
Under the new structure, the standards of components and the classification of defects are all managed by the headquarters, which is more convenient for subsequent business development and management.
Of course, new applications developed on the Mendix low-code platform can also achieve very smooth integration with the original Java framework system. This is mainly reflected in two aspects:
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From the framework level : the two are independent and unified. Embed the Mendix page into the iFrame framework in the form of an external link, and perform single sign-on through an independent authentication center, so that the coupling degree of the two in the same system is relatively low, and the single module is relatively stable, reducing mutual influence and not affecting Users will not feel fragmented when using it.
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From the level of authority control : the Java framework level controls the page visibility, and Mendix controls the page operation authority, giving full play to the advantages of the two. The Java page is flexibly configured, and Mendix can simply and intuitively configure the button authority.
In the past, when deploying a system for maintenance and upgrading or launching a new application, it was first necessary to coordinate the window time of all bases and shut them down uniformly. The IT department often had to stay up all night to complete the online deployment in 6-7 hours. If you encounter a problem of unsuccessful launch, you need to go back and try again. When the old system encounters new function iterations, it also needs to be shut down for deployment, which greatly delays time and affects business. Now using Mendix to develop the online system, it is possible to push a new version almost every day. The time for each application deployment is only ten minutes. The key is that there is no downtime, and the impact on business is negligible. It has achieved a senseless online.
The main functions realized by the QMS system this time include:
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Product Defect Management
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Repair management
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Vehicle submission
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key inspection
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View and modify personalized reports
Summarizing the advantages of using Mendix low-code development QMS system, Sheng Fei summarized the following points:
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The communication requirements are clearer, the efficiency of adding, deleting, modifying and checking on the web is very high, the low-code development is fast, and the delivery is also fast;
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The QMS application developed by Mendix supports hot deployment, does not require downtime, does not need to coordinate the deployment time of each base, deploys at any time, and updates and iterates at any time;
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The new QMS system can also achieve perfect integration with the original Java framework system to save resources.
Through a large number of project verifications, SAIC Passenger Vehicle has repeatedly proved the feasibility and advancement of Mendix low-code application development in terms of use and performance, which can effectively save project development time and costs. With the rise of the Internet wave, SAIC Passenger Vehicle embraces new technologies with an open mind and is committed to building a high-tech automobile enterprise. From the perspective of the overall structure of IT, in addition to building an "industrial Internet platform" and "industrial big data platform", it is also necessary to efficiently connect various internal sectors of the enterprise such as: "smart supply chain", "smart factory" and "digital marketing" , so as to achieve structural cost reduction of the industrial chain, internal cost reduction and efficiency increase, and most importantly, agile response to market demand.
A thousand miles can be reached without accumulating steps. SAIC Motor has increasingly felt the advantages of Mendix's low-code in data-driven business value, user experience-centric, and deep and rich integration capabilities. Mendix has the ability to help SAIC Motor Yongche gradually realizes the strategic goal of "1+4" digital transformation!
About Mendix
In a digital-first world, where customers expect their every need to be met, employees expect better tools to get their jobs done, and businesses realize they can only survive and succeed through total digital transformation. Mendix, a Siemens business is rapidly becoming an enabler of digital transformation for enterprises. Its industry-leading low-code platform and comprehensive ecosystem integrate the most advanced technologies to help enterprises create solutions that improve interactivity, simplify operations and overcome IT bottlenecks. With the four pillars of abstraction, automation, cloud and collaboration, Mendix has greatly improved the productivity of developers, and relied on its own engineering collaboration capabilities and intuitive visual interface to help a large number of "citizen" developers who are not familiar with technology in their places. Create applications in the field of expertise. Mendix is a leader and visionary in the eyes of authoritative industry analysts, and it is also a cloud-native, open, scalable, agile and proven platform. From artificial intelligence and augmented reality, to intelligent automation and native mobility, Mendix has become the backbone of digital-first businesses. Mendix's enterprise low-code platform has been adopted by more than 4,000 leading companies around the world.