Complete Digital Transformation of Enterprise Processes for FUCHS, The Leading Lubricant Manufacturer

Manufacturing
Logistics
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We reimagined the key enterprise management procedures for FUCHS, the world’s No. 1 independent supplier of lubricants, empowering them to achieve a previously unattainable level of productivity.

Background

Photos from FUCHS photo gallery

Photos from FUCHS photo gallery

The almost century-long story of FUCHS, a global leader in the lubricants industry, is a testament to the bravery of Rudolf Fuchs, to whom the company owes its name. A young entrepreneur who started it in 1931 when he was 21 years old, Fuchs wasn’t scared by the dread of the global economic crisis and began selling oil canisters to transport companies. Since that time, FUCHS has expanded into a multinational powerhouse with a presence in over 45 countries. Headquartered in Mannheim, Germany, FUCHS now employs over 5,800 people. In 2022, it generated a record-breaking revenue of 3.4 billion EUR.

Of course, the path to success wasn’t easy. At some point, the company’s production capacity was no longer enough to meet market demands. Their in-house enterprise management system was slow-performing compared to competitors’ solutions. Plus, the previous data presentation took time to interpret, not to mention the platform’s lack of scalability. The latter was one of the strongest arguments favoring making a change.

For Emerline, it was an exciting opportunity to become an important part of the FUCHS’ history. With this inspiration, we began the work on the project.

Challenge

At the discovery phase, we defined the following main challenges FUCHS was struggling with:

Data Management

They didn’t have any centralized solution for storing and processing mission-critical data, such as equipment operation conditions, allocation, lubricant usage, maintenance schedules, and more, so their clients had to deal with the issue themselves. At that point, some companies kept tons of paperwork, while others spent time and money developing their data storage systems. Finally, some clients didn’t store data due to limited budgets. The overall situation was difficult for everyone since none of these methods was reliable.

Manual Processes

Their former data collection and entry processes were predominantly manual, making operational and pre-sales activities less efficient.

Equipment Downtime

They couldn’t proactively analyze equipment performance conditions and failed to detect early signs of equipment malfunction in time.

FUCHS has offices in many countries, so we deployed the new platform globally. One of the main strategic regions was China.

FUCHS has offices in many countries, so we deployed the new platform globally. One of the main strategic regions was China. Because of the Chinese Government’s policy, restrictions complicated the deployment of the new solution. The first challenge we faced was the unavailability of the particular Microsoft Azure services in China, which were available in Europe at the time of deployment. These services included CosmosDB (one of Azure’s flagship products), SMTP (mail service), and others.

Also, due to its strict policy of using data only within the country’s borders, China has its own local cloud solutions, email distribution services, telecom operators, and other providers.

To tackle these challenges, we deployed dedicated services for the Chinese region (such as Sendgrid for email distribution and others), setting an infrastructure based on Microsoft Azure similar to the European one.

Methodology & Approach

The Emerline team adopted a flexible and agile methodology for this ambitious project. Additionally, we employed the LEAN approach, which allowed us to prioritize features for the MVP and eliminate some of the initially planned ones early in the process.

As part of the pre-development research, we attended the client’s manufacturing plants and some of their customers’ production sites. Together with the client, we defined the feature set to include in the MVP. In the result, we provided the following functionality within the MVP:

  • Product chemical and technical tests.

    Technicians can add and store test results, including temperature, concentration by refractometer, pH level, total acid, slope, bacterial activity, liquid consumption, product consumption, and other data collected from manufacturing equipment.

  • Report generation

    Staff managers can generate reports about product consumption, liquid parameters, equipment location, product information, and relevant metrics, providing users with convenient visualizations of test results and usage data. The dedicated reporting feature allows sorting reporting data by products, machine types, working areas, and shifts so that users can view information for an entire site or a specific equipment piece.

  • Price calculation.

    The system automatically calculates the price for the product amount used within the set period.

When developing the MVP, our goal (besides testing the minimal feature set) was to find the most efficient data processing method to make data collection and analytics fast, accurate, and cost-efficient for each of the client’s customers. Ultimately, we decided to provide IoT connectivity within the platform, which enabled real-time data collection and facilitated reporting.

To ensure the platform’s scalability, we used a cloud platform as a hosting solution. We tested different cloud solutions and finalized our choice of Microsoft Azure for the following reasons:

  1. It demonstrated its high-performance capabilities, handling large data volumes simultaneously. We planned to implement a full-scale enterprise management platform to process multiple data streams simultaneously. Therefore, the performance capacities of this cloud platform were the critical factor when choosing between cloud providers. Initially, the client’s solution stored user data in the internal database using IdentityServer4. As their requirements changed, we migrated the data to Azure B2C, ensuring its scalability.
  2. Like FUCHS, Microsoft Azure is presented in all the main regions worldwide, including the US, Europe, China, and Africa, which has facilitated its deployment on a global scale.
  3. Microsoft Azure seamlessly integrated with the Microsoft365 service package, enabling us to arrange FUCHS’ document workflows within a single network.
  4. Finally, our detailed comparison of cloud providers showed that Azure has the highest fault tolerance and security. Given this, we optimized the client’s infrastructure costs during deployment.

In addition to all the solutions described, we implemented a series of proven technical methods and approaches that we’ve been developing, refining, and fine-tuning for more than a decade.

SonarQube integration

SonarQube is a powerful static code analysis tool that automates code quality checks, detects potential issues, and enforces coding standards throughout the development lifecycle. We integrated the tool into the client’s CI/CD pipeline to automate code quality checks.

Consistent coding styles and conventions in a codebase

For the backend, we used EditorConfig to maintain consistent coding styles when developers worked across various editors and IDEs. For the frontend, we chose ESLint, a plugin-based tool for identifying and reporting patterns in the ECMAScript/JavaScript code.

Code review best practices

  1. To deliver high-quality code, we divided it into manageable sections and reviewed it incrementally while keeping attention to detail.
  2. Next, we set up a local branch and tested the main changes on the client’s machine.
  3. We validated the adherence to the .NET coding standards, including naming conventions, code formatting, and language.
  4. After this, we verified the code’s accuracy by testing edge cases, validating input parameters, and ensuring correct behavior under various conditions.
  5. Finally, we assessed the code’s readability, organization, and structure to ensure it is easy to understand and maintain.

Solution

Within the agreed-upon time, we delivered a full-scale platform, which introduced the following solutions to the client’s persistent challenges:

User roles and connections within the FUCHS ecosystem

User roles and connections within the FUCHS ecosystem

IoT-powered data collection

We provided IoT connectivity within the platform, meaning data is collected in real-time from the connected sensors. Real-time data analytics allows users to do the following:

  • Monitor and control the equipment’s performance under different loads and changing temperature conditions
  • Obtain operative results of equipment maintenance inspections.
  • See how raw materials’ blending tests go, which tests are successful, and which are not.
  • Forecast when each raw material for lubricants will soon run out of stock.
  • Monitor tank conditions (thanks to the integration with different sensor vendors) in real-time, including the data about the current tanks’ condition (product amount in the tank), product quantity (real-time monitoring with notifications on abnormal conditions), consumption history (detailed product usage logs of product usage), and depletion forecasts (diagrams predicting future product levels).

Microsoft Azure & Global Identity Access Management

We developed a unified enterprise management platform based on Microsoft Azure. The choice of Microsoft Azure allowed us to integrate Global Identity Access Management solution with the customer’s Azure Active Directory so they could efficiently manage authentication and authorization processes across all their applications and components. The solution enhanced the security of the FUCHS platform, enabling multi-factor authentication, key storing, encryption, and decryption, risk reporting, and other Azure’s advanced data protection methods.

Customizable visual BI reports

With our embedded BI suite, we empower users’ business intelligence! We provide custom visual reports reflecting any critical data that users need. They can sort data by the relevant criteria for more efficient, faster analytics. Each report is presented in a way that makes it easy to analyze.

Customizable visual BI reports

Mobile app for technicians

We developed a mobile app for the technicians performing tests and consumption procedures on-site. The app allowed them to collect data into a single file. The app can work in an offline mode, so technicians can use it even in working areas without an internet connection.

Mobile app for technicians

Automated task management

Additionally, we built the ERP task management system for technicians that allows them to set recurring tasks for equipment services. Thanks to a convenient, user-friendly data visualization, technicians can build routes as a sequence of tasks. In this way, they can set recurring tasks that will be executed automatically on the manufacturing site.

Automated task management

Smart quality control

With a dedicated Issue Management module, users can proactively handle production issues and estimate risks, such as equipment damages resulting in leakages. If a leakage occurs, the system automatically calculates the time to fix it and the associated costs. Enterprise managers can analyze their production and financial losses and plan expenses accordingly if such an unexpected event occurs.

Smart quality control

Automated document workflows

When a new manufacturer is added to the system, the system automatically updates the related Excel file with the new manufacturing plants’ infrastructure, including data about equipment location across working areas and their connections.

System localization

For FUCHS’ customers operating internationally, we provide comprehensive system localization, translating fields, settings, configurations, and other management data into the required language or several languages. All field names are customizable so that customers can rename them if needed.

Technology Stack

DevOps

Azure DevOps (Git) as source control system

CI and CD system for Back-end, Front-end

Back-end DB

Microsoft Azure Cloud SQL Database

Microsoft Azure Storage

Redis

Back-end Services

Azure App Service

ASP.NET Core 3.1

Swashbuckle

Entity Framework

Serilog

Azure .NET SDK

Docker

RabbitMQ

Azure Queue

IdentityServer4

Hangfire

Front-end (static)

React

Material-ui or react-bootstrap

Sass

Front-end (dynamic)

Redux

Moment.js

Lodash

SPFx

Front-end (deployment)

Azure App Service

Webpack

Gulp

Npm

Mobile (static)

Typescript

React Native

Native Base

Mobile (dynamic)

MobX

Inversify

React Navigation

Realm

Moment.js

Axios

Lodash

Formik

Yup

Mobile (deployment)

Visual Studio App Center

Project Results

With the modern enterprise solution by the Emerline team, the customer managed to automate multiple business processes, which resulted in increased sales, enhanced technicians' work, efficient data management in one place, and facilitated access to valuable data.

Within the project, we managed to achieve the following results:

  • Increased satisfaction and loyalty of the client’s customers as, from that moment, the client could provide them with a single enterprise management solution (ERP) they lacked before.
  • Achieved higher enterprise productivity. as the client could manage multiple equipment assets simultaneously.
  • Provided more secure access to the platform’s critical data with gata access management tools. With these tools, we managed to achieve high security of user data in compliance with GDPR.
  • Ensured time-efficient data analytics and prompt reporting via real-time data tracking monitoring.
  • Accelerated the processing of data about equipment conditions, performance, tests with chemicals (raw materials mixed to produce lubricants), and other data collected in real-time from IoT sensors. Overall, we managed to reduce data processing times to 2 seconds, which included the time to open the page and filter results.
  • Reduced operational costs and minimized equipment downtime thanks to preventive maintenance procedures and alerts.

The platform significantly improved the coordination between the client’s offices, as they all had a single access point to the database and products. It also opened up space for smart data representation, which improved and accelerated the interpretation of important data and contributed to faster and more accurate decision-making.

Customer review

No project overview is complete without incorporating the customer’s perspective. Discover the impact and value of our solution through the eyes of those who benefit from it the most.

4.9

25 Reviews on Clutch

25 Reviews on Clutch

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