Systems that hold up at the workstation

I begin a shop-floor project at the workstation, not in the architecture diagram. At Wels that means standing at a machining centre or test bench and asking what the operator already knows, what the system wants from them and when. A value demanded before the work is finished invites an estimate; a value demanded twice invites a shortcut. I ask supervisors to name the step where each record is created and the colleague downstream who relies on it. Only then do we decide what the screen shows and what is captured automatically from the machine. I keep paper fallbacks for a defined period after go-live and remove them on evidence, not on a date. My plant-systems team measures how often records are corrected after the shift, because frequent corrections tell me the design is wrong before any dashboard does.

Our plants run older controllers, test-bench computers and machine software that cannot be patched on an office timetable. I treat the plant network as a set of zones whose connections are deliberate and documented, with remote access passing through one controlled route. Changes are scheduled with maintenance around production, and some risks are reduced by isolation rather than removed. I report to the supervisory board on what our controls cover and, just as plainly, what they do not. Machine builders and integrators are partners in this, and their service contracts now state how they may connect. I do not decide whether a line runs or stops; plant management does. My responsibility is that, when they make that call, they know which systems are exposed and how a failure would spread.

A valve's history begins at the foundry, where each melt receives a heat number, and continues through machining, assembly and the pressure tests that every valve undergoes before dispatch. Utilities and process customers increasingly expect EN 10204 type 3.1 inspection certificates delivered electronically and matched to the serial numbers they receive. I see this as a chain with several owners: the foundry metallurgist, the quality laboratory, the test technicians and the dispatch team. My team builds the links between their records and keeps them intact when a part is reworked or a casting is substituted. The test is practical: when a customer reports a problem, can we say within days which other valves share the same material and test history? Three years ago we could not. We now can for every valve made at Wels since mid-2023.

Purchasing, sustainability and finance all want more data from suppliers, and each request costs a supplier time. I prefer a smaller dataset that we will actually use, collected from the suppliers who matter most, with the source and method recorded for every value. Our portal carries order confirmations, delivery-date changes, material certificates and a limited emissions dataset. Where we estimate, the estimate and its basis are labelled as such and never presented as supplier-reported. EU sustainability reporting rules changed in scope and timing during 2025, and I asked our reporting advisers to tell us what evidence they would accept before we designed the template. I do not decide what the company discloses; finance and the sustainability lead do. My part is to make sure every figure they use can be traced to a supplier, a document or a stated assumption.