The treasure trove

You mean to tell me that Endress+Hauser has been systematically and centrally gathering instrument information for 20 years? I hear this astonished question quite often, because many other companies are only now beginning to establish such databases. We can thank our service orientation for the fact that we are a pioneer in this field. Back then we realized it would be complicated if customers could no longer find a calibration certificate, one of the most important instrument documents. With the serial number in hand, they had to call the responsible sales office, which in turn contacted the respective production facility, where the certificate had to be searched for – and then everything took its return journey to the customer. The archive was already huge at that time, even though back then we were producing only a small fraction of today’s 2.7 million sensors!

I must admit that 20 years ago, we approached the whole thing very intuitively. But we were confident that the information would create a lot of benefits. Indeed, as time progressed and the volume of data continued growing, it turned out to be a real treasure trove and a vast source of knowledge. For example, it wasn’t long before the data was being used to better advise customers and generate new quotations. On top of that, we gave customers access to their own product data on a single platform. With this transparency, we not only built a lot of trust but created new benefits as well. Since then, plant operators have been able to manage their products over the entire life cycle and thus optimize their processes. And today, instrument traceability helps quality management to create a high degree of transparency regarding product quality in the field.