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May 31, 2022

Johnson Controls takes a smart approach to building technologies with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform

In 1885, long before anyone talked about carbon footprints or climate change, Warren Johnson launched a company to explore new ways to harness and conserve precious energy resources. He was ahead of his time when he invented the world's first electric thermostat. In doing so, he also launched a tradition of innovation – a tradition that inspires thousands of Johnson Controls employees today and continues to drive its success. The story of Johnson Controls started with innovation – and the company continues to lead the industry in the creation and adoption of advanced building solutions.

Johnson Controls

Today, the company is exploring how to make its manufacturing facilities more efficient and responsive in line with its Industry 4.0 ambitions. One key opportunity was the digitization of shopfloor processes using Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Power Platform. The result is the Johnson Controls Power Smart Factory app, which helps to replace paper-based processes and bring real-time insights to employees who once waited hours for data when they needed it instantly.

The Johnson Controls manufacturing facility for Sabroe products in Denmark is a test case with hundreds of welders and blacksmiths assembling compressor units and heat pumps. Adrian Palka, Digital Manufacturing Manager at Johnson Controls, begins each workday at the manufacturing facility. It is a treasure trove of data. “Each day, we have a few thousand cases where someone starts, stops, or confirms a job. Gathering all that data manually and making universal use of it was proving a huge challenge,” he says.

This challenge led Johnson Controls to embrace the use of Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps to create a series of customized applications for use on the factory floor. “Creating the new apps has been transformational, giving our people real-time updates that boost efficiency and save cost,” says Palka. “Just a few weeks after launching our first version of the Power Smart Factory app, we saw huge spikes in productivity and efficiency,” he added. Now Johnson Controls uses its new apps to enhance factory agility and the adoption of Teams speeds up communication of important production data between all areas of the business.

“Just a few weeks after launching our first version of the Power Smart Factory app, we saw spikes in productivity and efficiency.”

Adrian Palka, Digital Manufacturing Manager, Johnson Controls

Manual processes in a modern factory: JCI sees a need to digitize

Mikkel Madsen, Manufacturing Engineer at Johnson Controls, describes the production floor at any given time as an exciting and fast-paced environment. “There’s always lots going on; welding, assembly lines, warehouse employees coming and going with parts. There’s no such thing as a boring day.”

However, in the days before the Power Smart Factory app, data didn’t flow as seamlessly as the factory assembly lines required. “We collected data on a piece of paper,” says Palka. “We had to wait at least eight hours before it was entered into our ERP system.” While a particular unit, say a heat pump, made its way through the factory, employees manually signed-off on the various steps required to get the unit ready for a customer, such as assembly and testing. “We literally pushed paper around in the production areas with the information that the operators needed,” explains Madsen. “If the paper got lost, we lost the information. Now that we have digitized our process with the Power Smart Factory app, crucial information never gets misplaced.”

Manual processes presented a challenge for scheduling production, too. Prior to the use of the Power Smart Factory app, operators logged the hours spent assembling individual units in a personal notebook and uploaded the information to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system at the end of a workday, or, in some cases, a busy work week. As a result, Johnson Controls  lacked insights into whether assembly progressed ahead of or behind schedule until after the fact. “Instead of being proactive, we had to be reactive,” says Madsen. “By the time we knew we were behind schedule, it was already too late. With the Power Smart Factory app, we are proactive and catch up on lost time before it becomes an issue.”

“With the Power Smart Factory app, we are proactive and catch up on lost time before it becomes an issue.”

Mikkel Madsen, Manufacturing Engineer, Johnson Controls

Designing a solution in weeks: JCI turns factory floor insights into a custom application

Johnson Controls saw that the manufacturing facility needed tools that matched the future-looking outlook of the business. “We decided to use Microsoft Power Platform and Power Apps to develop our applications because we’d have more control over what we develop,” says Palka, comparing the low-code development platform to outsourcing app creation. “We had our first application ready in just a few weeks, without needing to get too many IT specialists involved. And we could include other departments like manufacturing directly in the development process,” he says. “That was important, because these are the people who actually use the application every day.”

One of the people sharing expertise with app creators was Svend Andersen, Continuous Improvement Manager at the the manufacturing facility. “I am a firm believer in digitization and the power of working with live data,” says Andersen. “I was thrilled when I heard about the Power Smart Factory app.” Madsen also contributed ideas to the app, an empowering experience that made him feel better connected to the business. “I feel like I have a big voice,” he says. “A lot of the ideas that I came up with are actually in the system right now.”

The final product, the Power Smart Factory app, has three key functionalities. Palka explains: “We have the operator app, where operators can see the order they need to fill; the warehouse app, which helps our warehouse workers pick the correct material for each order; and the management app, which gives a live overview of how orders progress through the value chain.”

For Eva Salenius-Lundberg, Project Manager at Johnson Controls, using Power Platform to create applications helped JCI employees update and customize the app faster. “What’s great about Power Platform is that we can make the adjustments ourselves,” she says. “We can implement changes much faster, and it’s more cost-effective than outsourcing the app development.” Although the Power Smart Factory app has had a big impact at Johnson Controls, Salenius-Lundberg is already thinking about what’s next. “We want to develop it further to capture even more data from the shop floor,” she says. “We see great opportunities with this platform.”

“What’s great about the Power Platform is that we can make the adjustments ourselves. We can implement changes much faster, and it’s more cost-effective than outsourcing the app development.”

Eva Salenius-Lundberg, Project Manager, Johnson Controls

A more responsive, efficient factory helps JCI meet customer demands

With the Power Smart Factory app, Johnson Controls I employees use real-time information to make decisions faster and to improve efficiency. “Today, people log hours spent working on individual jobs directly into the Power Smart Factory app rather than recording it manually, saving 15 minutes every day on that task alone,” says Anderson. And if operators run into an issue with the assembly of a unit, they use the Power Smart Factory app to raise an alert from the factory floor and solve the problem fast. “Our operators can use the app to flag a problem and get a quick response with the right level of support,” says Salenius-Lundberg.

Along with using the Power Smart Factory app to respond more quickly to issues, Johnson Controls employees use Microsoft Teams to collaborate across the factory. “Teams is a quick and easy tool we use to communicate issues in the production area,” says Soren Eriksen, Production Leader at Johnson Controls. “It takes time to navigate the production area, so if I need an answer from an engineer, I can take a picture of the product, send it on Teams, and get an answer quickly.”

While the use of the Power Smart Factory app and Teams helps make life easier for employees at Johnson Controls, the new technology improves outcomes for customers as well. “The customers demand fast delivery, low cost, and high quality,” says Anderson. “In order to give that, we have to look at optimizing our day-to-day business. We use the Power Smart Factory app to work more efficiently and make the right decisions.”

“It takes a bit of time to navigate the production area, so if I need an answer from an engineer, I can take a picture of the product, send it on Teams, and get an answer quickly.”

Soren Eriksen, Production Leader, Johnson Controls

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