Developing and delivering low-code applications three to four times faster and expanding the IT team

Shifting toward the future

AESSEAL, a subsidiary of AES Engineering Ltd, engineers products and systems used in a wide range of pumps and rotating equipment to prevent liquids and gases from escaping into the environment, improve equipment reliability and reduce maintenance costs.

With over 235 locations in 104 countries and an industry-leading portfolio of custom predictive and preventive engineering products, AESSEAL needed a solution to bridge legacy systems with a modern technology stack, or it risked falling behind.

To accomplish this goal, AESSEAL used the Mendix™ Low-code platform, which they learned about from their 15-year relationship with Siemens Digital Industries Software and their use of Teamcenter® software. Mendix and Teamcenter are part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

In 2022, AESSEAL’s information technology (IT) team built a low-code proof of concept (POC) to refresh a legacy shop floor solution and pressure test the platform’s integration capabilities with critical engineering record systems.

After a successful pilot project, AESSEAL is focusing on standardizing their low-code development with starter templates, codeveloping with an expert partner to grow their team and leveraging Mendix to support keeping the core clean.

Hindering innovation due to system integration

For Stuart Welsh, IT director at AESSEAL, siloed legacy manufacturing systems with significant technical debt prevented his team from delivering new, innovative solutions in recent years.

“From an IT perspective, our challenges are integration, integration and integration,” says Welsh. “We love SAP and it has transformed our business. We wouldn’t have gotten through COVID and remote work without it – but it’s an absolute beast to integrate with. The same is true with Teamcenter.”

Between managing never-ending upgrades, refreshing legacy applications or having to address challenges that result from non-standardized shadow IT solutions created by the business, Welsh’s IT team is spread incredibly thin.

“I’ve got a to-do list that’s a mile long,” says Welsh. “We’ve got some fantastic people who have been with the business for a long time and are passionate about it but there’s just not enough of them and there’s not enough hours in the day to address everything on that list.”

Welsh attended the Mendix UK Manufacturing Forum in 2022 and connected with other organizations in the same position. Seeing the potential to extend their development capacity and solve integration challenges, AESSEAL moved forward with a Mendix POC.

Sealing the deal with a proof of concept

Before the IT team at AESSEAL broke ground on the POC they designed to verify low-code application development, they agreed the project needed to showcase business-critical functionality and meet their integration requirements.

The POC would refresh a key software system on the AESSEAL shop floor that was based on aging technology, accessible on limited versions of Windows and linked SAP, Teamcenter and their manufacturing execution systems (MES). The first POC AESSEAL decided to pursue was to create a live list, which is a user interface (UI) component that dynamically loads and displays data in a list, allowing data to load incrementally (via scrolling or demand) instead of all at once.

“We chose a live list for our proof of concept with Mendix, not only because it was a clear business need, but also because it ticked all those things we wanted to address in a proof of concept: SAP integration, Teamcenter integration and user permission controls,” says Welsh. “We wanted to take Mendix out for a real-world test.”

With two developers, a SAP architect and a live list product owner, AESSEAL quickly built a new application with an improved UI. This UI integrated production orders and stock plans from SAP, allowed operators to manage the sequencing of jobs based on material supply and demand and alerted operators when machines needed cleaning or maintenance. Additionally, it also surfaced 3D JT computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) files from Teamcenter or 2D drawings.

“We store all of our CAM programs in Teamcenter, which is available to the operator on the shop floor,” says Welsh. “Once they start the job and they know the machine they’re on, they can send the CAM program directly to the machine controller from the live list. That was our first project. Although we had some challenges with it, we love the result.”

AESSEAL followed the advice of Roboyo, a Siemens and Mendix expert implementation partner, and quickly released a minimum viable product (MVP) to a core set of users, collecting feedback that would inform their approach to scaling the application and their Mendix competency.

Laying a foundation for scalability

Encouraged by Roboyo and the critical lessons they learned from the live list project, AESSEAL began to investigate other starter applications. The first starter application built on Mendix allowed the enterprise to create a unified branding experience across their UIs with enriched user permissions by adding authentication and nuanced application access.

“We used the SAP connector for the first time, user authentication and just about every background application that you need to communicate with SAP in that integration,” says Welsh. “Then we did a similar thing with Teamcenter. The applications are there. They are complete. They work. And they are ready for us to deliver our next Mendix application.”

AESSEAL generated a backlog of features and applications they would build with Mendix. However, the first order of business for the IT team was to go back and iterate on the live list feature by adding more than MVP functionality, including user authentication capabilities developed as part of the starter application.

“We picked the right project, but we fell into the trap of saying: ‘Here’s your new version of the live list,’” says Welsh. “And the employees on the shop floor went: ‘Yeah, but it doesn’t do this, and it doesn’t do that, and I used to use that, but it isn’t here.’”

Delivering enhancements with low code proved to be faster than with legacy tooling, and in parallel to consistent feature releases, AESSEAL was able to scope out the team and project fit for Mendix.

“We’ve just hired a junior developer who’s going through the certification process and getting up to speed,” says Welsh. “We have another senior member of our development team who is going to start the Mendix certification in September, and we are recruiting a tester. We are growing our internal Mendix team. We’ve taken that initial leap of faith.”

Engineering innovatively

AESSEAL went from testing low code as a concept to incorporating Mendix into business-critical workflows. The excitement has been contagious, and word spread quickly about the IT team’s new successes and capabilities.

The digital engineering team has shifted from traditional development to adding new hires with low-code experience and introducing training for existing employees.

“We took a senior C#, .NET developer – a traditional developer – and introduced her to low code,” says Welsh. “She’s now absolutely sold on Mendix. About 90 percent of her work is now Mendix based, and she loves it.”

AESSEAL’s vision for Mendix is clear, according to Welsh: If they cannot natively build an application or feature in Teamcenter or SAP, they will turn to Mendix.

“We’re going to keep SAP clean,” says Welsh, which will be critical as the team has already rolled out SAP S/4HANA in 33 countries to date. “That’s the commitment that we’ve made to the platform based on the success we’ve had in delivering our proof of concept.

“Five months in, and our team already knows the type of questions they need to answer. They stood up at a recent management meeting and told the boss that developing in Mendix is three to four times faster than the traditional methods they used previously. Now that’s brave. That takes commitment for a developer to stand up in front of a management team and say that. They clearly believe it.”

With Mendix, AESSEAL has the tools to bridge legacy and modern technology to deliver a more connected, future-ready and scalable engineering environment.