Equipment support services for Gerhard Schubert gain key upgrades

Germany’s Gerhard Schubert group has moved to expand its ‘4YOU Service’ portfolio, offering additional digital support services to customers and enabling potential efficiency and sustainability gains to be made, writes Neill Barston.

As the company explained, it has sought to enhance its customer offering against a backdrop of major energy price hikes, as well as raw materials costs and shortage of skilled workers that has placed pressure on production operations around the world.

Consequently, as the company noted, machine availability is an essential factor for manufacturers, including those within the confectionery and snacks market,  in which downtime can prove hugely costly. However, Schubert has gained considerable traction through creating its 3-D part printing offering to customers, which has delivered considerable gains.  

“Our customers are facing enormous pressures – financially and in terms of personnel and organisation. As a machine manufacturer, we not only have to respond to this, we also need to proactively offer solutions that promote transparent, networked and efficient processes,” explains Uwe Galm, Director of Customer Services at Schubert. The result is a greatly expanded service portfolio that combines classic maintenance and repair services with digital services under the ‘4YOU Service’ umbrella brand at Schubert.

“Today, our customers dictate a tight maintenance window, but they also expect perfect preparation – and rightly so,” explains Galm. Any deviations are practically unthinkable. Machine manufacturers are required to ensure maximum precision in planning and implementation. Even brief interruptions in production can result in significant financial losses. When perishable products are concerned, unexpected downtime can even result in entire batches being discarded – a serious loss, also in terms of sustainability.

Schubert is successfully addressing these requirements with a rigorous, finely tuned concept: ready-to-go spare part kits, plug & play modules, precisely scheduled deployment planning and clearly defined processes all come together to make sure that maintenance work is carried out as efficiently as possible.

Digital access
The main prerequisite for this is full transparency of the lines themselves. 4YOUconnect now gives line operators and service personnel digital access to all relevant machine documentation, such as operating instructions, circuit diagrams, parts lists and 3D views of available spare parts. This makes them even easier to identify and order via the integrated web shop – for a service process that is entirely digital.

As the company added, efficient processes also rely on networked systems: Schubert provides the required digital infrastructure with cutting-edge monitoring and analysis tools such as CARE 2.0. The greatly expanded ‘Connection for Analytics, Reporting and Efficiency’ platform, to be introduced later this year, enables standard-compliant calculation of key OEE metrics for packaging machines. The company will be presenting this important building block for increased production reliability and business efficiency at Fachpack in Nuremberg from 23 to 25 September.

In addition, by interpack 2026, 4YOUconnect will include a shared maintenance calendar that will enable customers and Schubert to plan maintenance measures in a way that is precisely tailored to production processes. “Our goal is a digital logbook that documents all work seamlessly and ensures a transparent service history in the long term – providing real added value, also with regard to audits and traceability,” explains Galm.

Guided maintenance routines will complement the concept. This measure, which is designed to guide operators and maintenance personnel digitally through all necessary steps, enables Schubert to counteract the already noticeable impact of the shortage of skilled workers.

Additional specialist knowledge is provided by the company’s in-house learning platform, ‘Schubert Learning Space’, where machine operators can complete training courses on the main operating steps at any time and from any location and repeat them as often as they like.