As the biggest manufacturer of pliers in the world, Knipex wanted to digitally transform its operations across the company and drive business process automation. Not only was Knipex faced with the need to convert incoming order data from a wide variety of formats, a mapping process that was far too complicated, and lengthy coordinating with external service providers were just three of the company’s various challenges. The company also found their approach to adapting customer interfaces was too complex.

Lobster had a solution for all these issues. The Lobster_data middleware comes with all common national and international data standards and protocols included, so conversion problems are solved with ease. Its unique 6-phases-model intuitively guides users through the mapping process in a sequence of steps. This standardisation ensures clarity and better traceability, particularly if responsibilities within the department change with new employees joining the mapping process. The many API management features also significantly improve the availability and usability of interfaces. Furthermore,Knipex can specify data integration preferences, such as splitting incoming data by the time of delivery or selecting order-related data transfers. Error messages are triggered as soon as a sub-system goes offline, or a data transmission fails. Time-consuming searches for log files are no longer required.

Knipex easily transitioned gradual from their old middleware solution to Lobster_data during everyday operations. The company’s core business was not affected by the change.