RadControls™ forWPF
CASE STUDYWorld-leading manufacturing
equipment vendor creates industryfirst touchscreen interface with Telerik
As the world’s largest producer of wood processing andmanufacturing machines, HOMAG Group has always been known
for its market-leading innovation. When launching an ambitious
project to create an industry-first touch interface platform for all its
machines, HOMAG turned to Telerik RadControls for WPF –with spectacular results.
Overview
SECTOR
Manufacturing
RegionGlobalCustomer Profile
HOMAG Group is the world’s leading
producer of machines for woodprocessing and manufacturing.
Headquartered in Germany, thecompany has more than 5,000
employees and revenues of€770 million.
Challenge
With a reputation for innovation,
HOMAG sought to create an industryfirst touch interface platform for its
entire range of machines. However,technical challenges threatened thesuccess of the project.
Solution
Using the Telerik RadControls for
WPF, HOMAG created an effective,
flexible and adaptable touch interface
for all its machines.
Benefits• Rapid development using Telerik
RadControls• Successful implementation of richtouch control system• Launch of powerTouch to industry
acclaim at LIGNA 2013www.homag.com

The Telerik RadControls made a significant contribution to thesuccess of the powerTouch development project. The flexibility
and adaptability of the Telerik grid is second to none, and Telerik
support has been helpful and efficient.”
Andreas Plumeyer,
Software Architect WPF, HOMAG

Background

How RadControls for WPF
cut development time
Telerik RadControls for WPF
helps developers create powerfulenterprise applications with rich datavisualizations in half the time.
The controls are built from theground up to ensure that the coding
experience is seamless and intuitive,
liberating developers to concentrateon the business logic.
Versatile
The suite comprises more than 55
production-ready controls with 10
out-of-the-box themes, including
Windows 8 and Touch.
Telerik RadControls for WPF supports
the MVVM development pattern,
helping teams engaged in complex
application development achieve
efficient, reusable code.
Innovative
In a world of ever-growing data
volumes, Telerik works hard toensure that RadControls for WPF
delivers a vivid, interactive UI withoutcompromising on performance. Asa result, RadControls for WPF has
the most aggressive roadmap in theindustry with 3 releases a year.
Reliable
RadControls for WPF comes with
Telerik’s industry-leading 24-hour
turn-around support – delivered by
the developers who createdthe controls.

HOMAG Group is the world’s leadingmaker of wood processing machines.
With an estimated 28% share of
the global market, it is fair to saythat wherever furniture is being
manufactured, HOMAG equipment islikely playing a part.
Founded in Germany in 1960,
HOMAG has grown dramaticallyduring its 50 year history, absorbing a
number of competitors and opening
facilities in locations as diverse as
Sao Paolo, Shanghai and Bangalore.
Today, the company employs morethan 5,000 people and generates
revenues of more than€770 million.
HOMAG products range fromstandalone machines for craftsmen,
to fully automated mass-productionlines used by the world’s largest
furniture producers.

Germany at eleven sites, eachspecializing in a specific typeof equipment. With separate
development teams creating softwareat each location, HOMAG machines
evolved to deliver very divergent
user experiences.
“There was fragmentation in thedevelopment of our machinecontrols,” says Andreas Plumeyer,Software Architect WPF, HOMAG.
“Machines are handled differently.
There was no consistency in theuser interface. Additionally, support
was provided through the individualteams. All this created inefficiencies
for us and sometimes for ourcustomers.”
HOMAG needed to create astandardized platform for its control
software. This was a significant
challenge, not only in terms of design
and usability, but also in the selectionof the right technologies tosupport it.

The Challenge
HOMAG has always been known
for innovation. Its machines aresoftware-controlled and networked,
enabling customers to implement
sophisticated operations not only ateach individual step in the production
process, but all the way along theproduction line.
However, for historical reasonsthe company’s engineering anddevelopment is dispersed acrossThe Solution
Starting in 2008, HOMAG conducted
a two-year project with machineinterface specialists UID of
Ludwigsburg to reevaluate every
aspect of its user interface design.
The result was a new design
paradigm based on the touchscreen.

“On the production floor, our end
users fall into two groups: unskilled
factory workers and highly skilledcraftsmen. The touchscreen allows
us to meet the different needs ofboth groups with a single adaptableinterface.”
In the typical production line
environment, programming is carriedout remotely and the machine
operator selects predefined options.
However, where real-time control
is required, it is essential for the
touchscreen to deliver a smooth andresponsive end-user experience.
Development challenges

HOMAG began a three-year
development project to create andimplement the new control platform.
However, translating the touchscreen
concept into reality brought
immediate challenges.
“At first we tried building our own
controls. We used Visual Studiocontrols and tried to meet theguidelines developed during theUX workshops. At first we weresuccessful, but when we got to thegrid, this was where we ran
into roadblocks.”
The biggest issue was performance.
“For our office furniture
manufacturing equipment, the gridhas to display 500-1000 line itemswith 100 columns. It needs to be
responsive in milliseconds, otherwise
it slows down the user unacceptably.”

Additionally, there were issues
achieving a fluid scrolling action,
and with virtualization. Further,
the interface design required ahierarchical grid, which was notavailable out of the box with thestandard controls. All this wascompounded by the 30 languages
the system needed to accommodate.
Telerik RadControls“We realized that we needed to use
third party controls. We evaluatedeight toolsets including Infragistics,
DevExpress, Component1 and Xceed.
In the end we chose Telerik – first forthe capabilities of the grid, second forthe grid styling and design, and thirdfor the additional controls beyond thegrid.” said Andreas.
Using the Telerik RadControls for
WPF, front end development was
carried out by a team of twelve
developers drawn from different
HOMAG sites across Germany. “Wewere still supporting the existingproduct lines, so we adapted a twoweeks on, two weeks off cycle. This
helped us to stay Agile.”
The Telerik controls not only provided
the performance HOMAG required,but were also reliable and easy towork with. “We only had to contact
Telerik support a couple of times
during the development process.”

How RadControls for WPF
support Touch
Telerik RadControls for WPF provide
touch support. The functionality is built
on top of an internally implemented
framework which provides the necessary
extensibility and the ability for eachof the specific controls in the suite tosupport only those gestures appropriate
to it.
Supported touch gestures include
swipe, pinch, tap, tap-and-move andtap-and-hold. These gestures produce
different effects, tailored to the needs ofeach control.
For example, the RadGrid’s touch
support enables users not only toperform simple actions such as scrollingby swiping, but also to execute moresophisticated activities includinggrouping, sorting, filtering, reordering
or freezing a column and resizing acolumn or row.
With touch, users enjoy a more
immediate, intuitive user experience.
This is particularly useful in contexts
where conventional mouse andkeyboard interfaces are not appropriate,such as at manufacturing sites.

HOMAG uses the HELIX diagnostictool. This allows the interface toprovide a 3D display of systemerrors, showing where problems havearisen in the machine. Integrating
this with the touch interface wasstraightforward, says Andreas: “Therewas no problem getting Telerik
controls to integrate.”

The Result
The new Telerik-powered touchscreeninterface was an immediate successat its launch at the international
LIGNA 2013 timber and woodworking
industry trade fair. Branded‘powerTouch’, the new system wasavailable on 30% of HOMAG’smachines at the time of launch, withcoverage constantly expanding.

Being first in the market withtouchscreen control has reinforced
HOMAG’s reputation for innovation.
It has also revolutionized the way
HOMAG sells machines. “There’s nofear among business users to use themachines anymore,” says Andreas. “AtLIGNA, the Chairman was showing
the application. This was the first time
we were able to have business users
demonstrate the machines.”
PowerTouch provides HOMAG
with significant benefits in its own
manufacturing process. With aunified and standardized interface,
the company will no longer needto maintain a variety of interface
systems across its range, withseparate software and hardware
teams. It also expects to benefit froma lower support load and a simplified
support infrastructure.

For end customers, powerTouchsaves time and money. With a single,
unified interface across the range,
HOMAG machines now have ashallow learning curve for operators,
who can transfer between machines
and processes with little retraining.

The Verdict“The Telerik RadControls madea significant contribution tothe success of the powerTouchdevelopment project,” says Andreas.
“The flexibility and adaptability of
the Telerik grid is second to none,
and Telerik support has been
helpful and efficient.”

Find out more
About Homag
HOMAG Group is the world’s leading
manufacturer of wood processing
machines, with an estimated global
market share of 28% and 5000 employees
worldwide. Headquartered in Germany,
HOMAG sells in 90 countries and hasoffices and production facilities inlocations as diverse as Shanghai, Bangaloreand Sao Paolo. Its products range fromstand-alone machines for cabinet shops,
to complete production lines. Customers
use HOMAG machines to produce homeand office furniture, kitchens, parquet
and laminate flooring, windows, doors,stairs and even complete wooden house
construction systems.
About RadControls for WPF
RadControls for WPF is a powerfuldevelopment suite of UI controls forcreating engaging, interactive user
experiences for Windows desktop
applications. With a short learning curveand backed by Telerik’s industry-leading
technical support, RadControls for WPF
enable the rapid and efficient creation ofpowerful, responsive and scalable line-ofbusiness and enterprise applications.

Go to www.telerik.com
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Email sales@telerik.com

About telerik
Telerik is the market-leading provider
of end-to-end solutions for application
development, automated software testing,agile project management, reporting, andcontent management across all major
Microsoft development platforms. Telerik
is trusted by more than 100,000 customers
worldwide for its innovation and industrybest technical support.

Copyright Telerik 2013. All rights reserved. RadControls
for WPF is a trademark of Telerik AD. All othertrademarks are properties of their respective owners.
All information believed correct at time of printing.