HÖRMANN Digital GmbH was established in 2019 as a means of pooling the expertise in digitalisation that existed within HÖRMANN Group and to enable a host of synergies to be brought to bear in the process of rapidly advancing digitalisation. This structure optimises the use of resources on the journey towards becoming a digital business while also consolidating the company’s long-term competitive position. ‘In addition to internal digitalisation, which often lays the groundwork, we’re talking about external digitalisation, meaning incorporating digital products and new digital business models to complement the existing one, such as in maintenance and servicing,’ explained Anna Hörmann, managing director of HÖRMANN Digital.

HÖRMANN Digital offers companies state-of-the-art development expertise and methods that can be used for order-related project development or in the collaborative development of innovative digital products, either entirely or partially covering multiple companies. In the process, HÖRMANN Digital works alongside a wide-ranging network of partners with the aim of arriving at make-or-buy decisions and integrating solutions that are already available on the market.

 

BugJack, the new ticketing tool

Early in 2020, HÖRMANN Digital assembled its first development team, which realised its first project later that same year. This was BugJack, an innovative ticketing tool that has arisen out of a collaboration with HÖRMANN Logistik. The tool is designed to help handle bug reports at customers’ logistics centres. Previously, when a bug report came in, customers would call the service provider. Only then would the error be fixed, usually requiring a site visit by an employee from the service provider. BugJack offers the option to use intuitive and digital methods to report bugs quickly and easily, provide clear tracking of the bug-fixing process and produce documentation that can then be used to help deal with future errors. BugJack is also the basis for further digitalisation of the service process and the integration of additional functions such as condition monitoring and predictive maintenance.

The development team completed the first version of the new tool in autumn 2020, and it then entered the trial phase at HÖRMANN Logistik. ‘As well as developing BugJack, we also started to work with various companies in the HÖRMANN Group on developing other projects and digitalisation methods in 2020,’ said Hörmann. The company has partnered with HÖRMANN Logistik and HÖRMANN Automotive to explore the topic of predictive maintenance in more detail and is working on energy monitoring in concert with HÖRMANN Services. It is also collaborating with HÖRMANN Vehicle Engineering, HÖRMANN Rawema and external partners on an innovative project relating to the future of intramodal logistics.

A manager with experience in the fields of digitalisation and IT joined the company as chief digital officer (CDO) at the start of 2021 with a view to broadening its range of activities over the course of the year and devising a comprehensive digitalisation strategy for HÖRMANN Group.

You can find more information about HÖRMANN Digital here