KION Group — the world's leading supplier of industrial vehicles and supply chain solutions — provides integrated material handling solutions for factories, warehouses and distribution centers in more than 100 countries. With brands such as Linde Material Handling, Baoli, STILL, OM Voltas and Dematic, KION Group is the world's second largest forklift manufacturer and a leading supplier of warehouse automation technology.

As its business grew, KION Group encountered more data analysis trial and simulation requirements. But its traditional approach took a long time, and requirements changed often. IT leadership decided to change the team’s role from service provider to coach.

KION Group engaged Avanade to support its digital transformation with the construction of a large data analysis platform based on Microsoft technology. This has enabled IT to create a data pool and model and provide self-service business intelligence tools to business departments. Through a training workshop and an in-house data community, analysts are empowered to create reports in less time in Microsoft Power BI. This accommodates KION Group’s multidimensional business analysis requirements and adds agility and flexibility to analytics tasks.

In addition, through Power BI and Microsoft Power BI, Avanade delivered an intelligent factory for production management. This provides factory leaders with real-time, online dashboards. They can see all capacity and output information and follow up on efficiency and operations, even when away from the shop floor.

Previously, report data was collected manually. Today, KION Group updates metrics in near real time and engages service engineers through mixed-reality technology from Microsoft Dynamics 365, remote support and step-by-step holographic technical training. When engineers face problems at a client site, they can seek offsite experts through Microsoft HoloLens. In addition, experts can provide high-quality training through HoloLens.

Now, business analysts can produce more than 50 reports by themselves in an average of 10 fewer days per report. Remote assistance through HoloLens allows for quick problem solving. That has helped new engineers make repairs more efficiently, improved client satisfaction and reduce travel costs. These solutions are helping KION Group to achieve sustainable growth.

Get started and accelerate with low-code technologies and innovation governance.