Klingele, with 3100 employees, produces paper and corrugated cardboard packaging solutions at three paper mills, thirteen corrugated board plants and eight processing plants across Europe, Africa as well as Central and South America. In 2025 the group generated a turnover of one billion euros.
At one of its largest plants in Delmenhorst, near Bremen, the Klingele Group processes paper webs into single- or multi-layer corrugated board, which is then processed on various machines into packaging and custom-printed. The packaging ranges from standard shipping cartons to high-quality packaging solutions and trays for retail sales, such as for food and consumer goods.
The huge systems operate on a three-shift basis. 'We simply cannot afford any interruptions to the production process caused by machine breakdowns,” explains Christian Borchers of Klingele Process Management Technology: “Reliable maintenance and service form the backbone of our production processes.'
At the Delmenhorst plant, the maintenance team compiled 600 maintenance items that had previously been managed manually prior to the introduction of Smartenance. 'We did have Word documents with photos describing the maintenance tasks, but everything was inconsistent and only available in paper form,' says the maintenance expert, reflecting on past experiences.
That changed when Klingele discovered Smartenance from Festo: 'That’s when we realised just how simple, smart and intuitive maintenance and service can be,' adds Daniel Malolepszy, International Continuous Process Improvement Manager at Klingele.
Malolepszy has already overseen several roll-outs of the Festo Smartenance maintenance and service software within the Klingele Group. With installations, for example, at the corrugated board plants on the Canary Island of Tenerife and on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, it makes the company one of the world’s most intensive users of industrial maintenance software.
'The intuitive operation using tablets, which are now available at all our systems, makes Smartenance really easy for any machine or system operator,' says maintenance expert Borchers. All maintenance points are accompanied by images and videos. The status of the maintenance items can be viewed by anyone responsible for the maintenance and service of the machines and systems. 'With Smartenance, we can easily assign maintenance tasks to specific people; that also increases their sense of responsibility for the tasks at hand,' he adds.
'Before we introduced Smartenance, we had to spend time entering all maintenance events into a computer using a complicated user interface, which sometimes meant that entries were overlooked,' explains Borchers. That can no longer happen, as maintenance staff can now easily confirm completed tasks on their tablets.
'In addition to traditional maintenance and service tasks, we also use Smartenance for safety inspections, whether in the factory itself, in the offices or in the outdoor areas of the plant.' 'What we used to do with pen and paper and completing countless Excel spreadsheets can now be done quickly and easily with the Smartenance app on a tablet,' explains Sabine Sonnabend, Assistant to the Technical Manager.
'It was precisely because Smartenance is easy to use that we decided to roll out the maintenance app across all Klingele sites worldwide, as it supports stable processes, consistent quality and enables preventive maintenance,' sums up Daniel Malolepszy, who continues to provide practical support and advice to maintenance specialists at all Klingele plants during the software rollout.
Another helpful feature is the system’s straightforward setup, which allows existing maintenance schedules and system structures to be easily imported. The wide range of available languages in the system makes it possible to reach employees around the world in their own language. 'All in all, Smartenance demonstrates just how simple and successful the digitalisation of business processes can be,' concludes Malolepszy.