Development of the Hauni operability philosophy

Purpose

Hauni Maschinenbau AG (Hamburg) supplies equipment for the tobacco processing industry and for the production lines used in the manufacture and packaging of cigarettes. Hauni provides problem solutions for the production of high quality cigarettes, cigars, and cigarillos to customers throughout the global tobacco industry. Appropriately, Hauni delivers to customers around the world.

With a large number of different machines in their product lines and a non-homogenous spectrum of international and domestic users, ease of use is the critical factor for customer acceptance. In order to compete successfully worldwide with simple and ergonomic use controls, Hauni performed, in cooperation with ZMMI, an international analysis of its users and tasks.

Implementation  

Hauni wanted to identify not only weaknesses in the current operations, but also the country-specific peculiarities of its customers and, more importantly, create a model of the user mentalities and desires. This was done using a representative customer survey in 10 businesses located in the countries of Germany, Austria, Ireland, Russia, and the USA. The size of the visited companies ranged from small production plants with less than 10 cigarette production lines to fully automated operations with over 100 lines. The analysis revealed country-specific differences which, above all, were mainly organizational and qualification related. The conspicuous drop in qualifications from east to west was surely one of the most interesting results.

The insights gained from the survey represented an important basis for the optimization of the human machine interface. The identification of user tasks on the equipment, in turn, enabled the preparation of information about context-specific functionalities and specific user groups.

ZMMI then developed a rough concept for the new user interface based on the information collected. This included the prototype design of sample mask and operational processes.  

On the basis of the application analysis performed and the use model that was prepared, ZMMI was able to recommend the hardware platform for the future user interface. This step also included a recommendation for the use concept for the hardware platform selected by Hauni, specifically, the 10”-18” touch screens.  

Result

The project results included a specific, basic layout of the user interface and a prototype design of the typical sample masks for the selected hardware.