Supporting Henkel’s efficiency challenges in projects on multiple fronts

Founded in 1876, Henkel looks back on more than 140 years of success. In 2020, Henkel reported sales of more than 19 billion euros and adjusted operating profit of about 2.6 billion euros. Henkel employs about 53,000 people globally – a passionate and highly diverse team, united by a strong company culture, a common purpose to create sustainable value, and shared values. As a recognized leader in sustainability, Henkel holds top positions in many international indices and rankings. Henkel’s preferred shares are listed in the German stock index DAX.

Henkel has a long term target to triple its value at same footprint by 2030 and a vision to become a climate-positive company by 2040. To achieve that Henkel was looking for a partner that could support them with efficiency on multiple fronts in their Laundry & Homecare (L&HC) business unit. The company wanted to reduce energy consumption, confirm ISO 50001 certification for all L&HC production sites and improve supply-chain resource efficiency. In addition, Henkel needed support in building their digital backbone and KPI reporting.

One of the main technical challenges Henkel was facing in achieving their goals was the heterogeneity of system land scape across different locations of L&HC, different PLCs, meter vendors, bus systems, existing local Energy Management Systems (EMS), filling lines and equipment.

Overall, Henkel wanted a solution that would be reliable, flexible, agnostic, accessible, global for all sites and based on central database for structured retrieval of data, KPIs and benchmarks from anywhere at any time.

Etteplan was chosen to be the supplier due to our wide and deep range of expertise.

Etteplan’s solution was a comprehensive efficiency project. The project started with the implementation of an Energy Management System (EMS) with roughly 4.000 physical and virtual sensors collecting over one million data points per day in 27 factories worldwide. The EMS enables the integration of production data and energy data KPIs and reporting for global ISO 50001 solution at Henkel. Etteplan also provided development, enhancements, maintenance, support and training for the EMS solution.

Based on the experience gained from the EMS project, Henkel and Etteplan added the data from L&HC filling lines to calculate the Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). Etteplan provided related services such as development, creation of global PLC templates, enhancements and maintenance. Henkel also received the rollout, training and support for OEE by Etteplan.

In parallel, a Big Data project started where all collected data and a growing number of other data sources were integrated into the Digital Backbone of the Laundry and Homecare business division.

Lastly, integration of SAP into the shop floor from in-bound and out-bound data interfaces was done by Etteplan. The integration entailed services, development, enhancements, maintenance, rollout and is accompanied by around the clock support from Etteplan.

The solution support for growth and sustainability strategies has reduced year-on-year energy consumption, by up to 18% in 2021, on top of other on-going reduction measures, such as investing in more sustainable process and automation equipment. The return of investment has proofed exponential with full payback received within four years and quadrupled ROI after eight years. Moreover, overall equipment efficiency has had improvements of 15% after just two years.

“Henkel has always had a flair for implementing creative ideas to save energy effectively. The real challenge here is having a good pool of data,” continues Dr. Johannes Holtbrügge, Senior Manager of Digital Transformation, Laundry & Home Care. “In Etteplan we have found a reliable partner who supports us in solving our challenges with knowhow, agility and flexibility.”