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The Challenge
The packaging industry operates in a highly competitive, low-margin, yet capital-intensive environment. New production machinery investments must meet stringent performance requirements to deliver acceptable returns on investment.
Bobst, a global leader in packaging and converting machinery, recognized limitations in their traditional troubleshooting approach. Sending factory technicians and experts to customer sites was becoming increasingly costly in both specialist time and travel expenses. Complicating matters further, many issues extended beyond simple technical problems with the machines themselves, often involving interconnected factors related to other processes or personnel throughout the production cycle.
The Solution
Bobst transformed their service model by implementing ei3's white-labeled remote service to launch their 'Helpline Plus' services. This innovation allowed service technicians to quickly, efficiently, and securely access client machines for troubleshooting without leaving Bobst offices.
The system's production monitoring capabilities provide comprehensive process data history, clearly showing machine settings, behavior, operator actions, and inputs leading up to any issues. With this combined approach, Bobst operators can identify and resolve machine or process problems confidently, presenting clients with data-driven evidence of root causes—whether equipment-related or stemming from client processes and operations.
A look at Bobst’s application, designed to manage machines efficiently with custom insights and smart functions.
Hear from Bobst on the various ways 'Helpline Plus' has contributed to their business
Results
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80% of machine-related issues solved online using remote service, significantly improving customer satisfaction through faster resolution
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$2 million USD saved in travel costs per year with Helpline Plus, enabling field service to focus on high-value customer visits
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75,000+ hours of troubleshooting delivered with remote access with enhanced machine performance and process monitoring capabilities
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340,000 hours of incident-free service delivered by connected machines worldwide
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200 service technicians across 52 countries providing 24/7 support, strengthened by real-time performance insights
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8,000 hours of training delivered through ei3, further enhancing field service capabilities
Hear from the Bobst team
"At Bobst, we look at connectivity, digitization, automation, and sustainability as the cornerstones of packaging production. We set out on this journey with ei3 in 2004. It has been a close relationship, and we now have over 5000 machines connected."
Alex Gigon, Director Service Operations at Bobst North America
“If we consider the whole picture, now we can start to measure OEE. We can begin measuring all the different KPIs we're looking for, demonstrating where you're doing well, where you need improvements, and where the value is. And at the end of the day, what this is really giving back is time. All of the above adds up to, for us, our industry vision: a connected factory, and we use ei3, Helpline and Apps to do it.”
Robert McCann, Head of Service Product Portfolio at Bobst
“This is a journey which Bobst has been undertaking for the last 15 years with a strategic partner, ei3…and its been a very very close relationship. We have over a thousand installations running in North America, so this is just not a vision, but it is actually happening right now. ”
Paul Stoudmann, Strategic Business Development Director at Bobst
About Bobst
Founded in Lausanne, Switzerland, Bobst has been a packaging industry leader for over 130 years. The company maintains a presence in over 50 countries, operates 19 production facilities worldwide, and employs more than 6,100 people globally.
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