German Edge Cloud and Scheer PAS: Strategic partnership for digital transformation in manufacturing

German Edge Cloud and Scheer PAS are pooling their strengths. The strategic partnership brings together two owner-managed companies with a reputation as pioneers of digital transformation. Faster digitalisation of production processes is the goal. Companies today need a higher level of flexibility and agility to adapt their production processes to new market demands. They must be able to react faster and more purposefully to unforeseen internal and external circumstances. Improvements in the areas of quality, resilience, delivery capabilities, transparency and OEE are the decisive benefits.

Limburg/Saarbrücken, 3. November 2022 – Two partners united by a common goal: To help manufacturing companies implement their digitalisation plans. German Edge Cloud (GEC) is part of the Friedhelm Loh Group and specialises in edge and cloud solutions, especially for industry-related applications and shop-floor apps serving the digitalised production of tomorrow. Their Production and IIoT specialists accompany smart factories from their first digitisation steps through to the realisation of agile digital production management. Scheer PAS has designed a leading software platform to simplify and accelerate the development and integration of digital production applications and the automation of innovative manufacturing processes.

Two pioneers of software development

“Our family-run companies share a passion for innovation,” says Prof. Dr. Friedhelm Loh, Owner and CEO of the Friedhelm Loh Group. “What counts for the industry today is speed and flexibility in digitalisation – especially against the background of current and coming economic and social challenges. Driving this process is an essential goal of the strategic partnership between German Edge Cloud and Scheer PAS.”

Prof. Dr. August-Wilhelm Scheer, founder and owner of Scheer Holding, agrees: “We are very pleased to have found an innovation-driven partner for Scheer PAS in the industry. GEC and the Friedhelm Loh Group have accumulated comprehensive know-how and practical experience when it comes to industrial automation processes. Scheer can contribute expertise in the fields of application development, integration and process automation. Together, we can simplify access to value creation using IIoT for the manufacturing industry. That will benefit above all smaller and medium-sized companies.”

Next-generation IIoT applications

First results of the cooperation are part of the ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS) from German Edge Cloud. Scheer PAS has been incorporated into the system as a low code and integration platform. Consequently, ONCITE DPS now combines the four core components of digital production into an integrated system: Smart MOM, IIoT, low-code development and edge computing. This combination of application and platform in a single solution enables manufacturing companies to implement reliable networking of their production, together with modern data management and flexible manufacturing processes. The benefits lie in greater production transparency, improved overall equipment efficiency (OEE) and faster reactions to unforeseen disturbances.

Thanks to the low code functionality, even production staff outside the IT department are now in a position to develop production-specific applications and automate production processes. The Scheer PAS platform is based on the concept of a ‘Composable Enterprise’, with a modular architecture as the foundation for software applications and business processes.

This modularity enables companies to react quickly and flexibly to new market demands. For example, new application services can be adapted in place during the production process and rolled out without needing to halt the production line (zero downtime). Using low code editors, the industrial engineer can create and integrate customised apps, dashboards and new data sources without external assistance.

As a result, it is significantly easier to implement factory digitalisation projects. With an inflexible, monolithic software architecture, the development and investment outlay would be considerably higher.

The digital transformation in industry is dependent on rapid progress and a broad foundation of both major corporations and small to medium-sized companies, and that is the goal that German Edge Cloud and Scheer PAS are pursuing together.