Background：
Zoomlion New Material Technology Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zoomlion. Formerly m-tec, a German company founded in 1978. As the world’s leading supplier of dry mix mortar materials and equipment, Zoomlion New Material Technology Co., LTD. Zoomlion provides global customers with overall building materials solutions covering new decoration materials, production equipments, logistics systems, construction equipment and formulation technology.
At present, Zoomlion New Materials has a series of products such as tile paving materials, putty powder, masonry mortar, plastering mortar, waterproof mortar, decorative mortar, self-leveling mortar, caulking agent, interface agent, insulation mortar, grouting material, ultra-high performance concrete, and etc., providing systematic solutions for construction and repair work.
With the rapid development of information technology to inject new vitality into product research and development, informatization and industrialization deep integration, research and development data digitization is the core competitiveness of modern enterprises. Zoomlion New Materials plans to build a digital R&D platform to achieve the following objectives:
Achieving paperless R&D data management, standardizing data management, and realizing digital transformation;
Collect and analyze product development process data, to accelerate product technology reform;
Simplifying workflow, to elevating R&D efficiency.
Challenges Faced by Zoomlion：
At present, the main problems in the management of R&D data of Zoomlion Material including: Lacking of unified management and re-utilization of historical data ; Writing paper experimental records is time-consuming and complicated; A large volume of experiments were repeating experiments; Lacking of a complete and refining experimental process and experimental equipment management mode, and cannot record experimental data and phenomena in time.
Our Solutions：
The digital R&D platform includes R&D project management system (PM), experimental record system (ELN), material management system (CIMS), and laboratory instrument management system (IM). Built an ELN-centered R&D system platform, with integrated related peripheral system. Important messages from the R&D platform project management system are sent to project members through OA email, integrated portal websites, unified identity platform, and users can access different system platforms through permission control, with only one account. Established a file server to facilitate R&D personnel to quickly obtain required test result files and avoid isolated data islands.
Results & Benefits：
Standardized project management:
The establishment of project management system enables managers to track the progress of all projects in real time, and correct the direction of work in time. Real-time review of weekly reports, problems, and summary statistics, and timely understanding of project progress and project problems; Notification messages were sent through OA email, achieving real time project information updates;
Experimental recording:
The standardized experimental template makes the record more standardized and complete, and the writing time of repeated records or similar records is greatly reduced.
Voice input function of Mobile Apps allows real-time recording of experiments procedures & phenomenon
Automated product price estimation during formulation, knowing the value of formulation instantly.
Quick experimental formulation registration, and the formulation database is managed in a unified way, with structured data format and management.
The formulation table library of R&D results and the output requirements of transferring the formulation table library to the production end were established.
Normalizing reagents management for better safety risk control:
Realizing a complete use and return tracking, with strict examination and approval mechanism, and manage the whole life cycle of experimental materials from storage to consumption to make the management of experimental materials safer;
Improved work efficiency and reduced reagent costs
Established instrument database, allows instrument information in the database can be directly imported into the experiment records, reduces the workload of manual input of a large number of parameters.
Introducing self-serving reagents claiming management for commonly used, undangerous reagents, greatly improve the efficiency of experimental materials.
Through materials inventory management system, achieving conveniently and timely inventory information query and reagents usage tracking, which greatly reduced the risk of expired experimental materials and experimental materials waste cost.
