How one industrial group uses Makula to manage both customer service and internal maintenance in a single platform
Company Overview
The Glave Group, headquartered in Norden, Lower Saxony, is a mid-sized industrial company with more than 300 employees. The group operates across several sectors, including stainless steel processing, special machine construction, and industrial IT solutions.
Companies within the Glave Group include:
The group not only builds machines for external customers but also uses them internally across its own production facilities. This internal relationship between OEM and operator plays a central role in how the group manages service and maintenance.
The Challenge
The Glave Group needed a way to support two key areas of its operations:
- Customer service for delivered machines
- Internal maintenance across its production site
One of the core challenges was aligning maintenance processes between NLT, the group’s machine-building company, and NB, which operates those machines internally. The teams needed a shared system to manage service requests and coordinate work across company lines.
Previously, workflows were handled in separate tools and departments. There was no centralised view of machine activity or service status. It was difficult to track who was responsible for what, and how far along a task had progressed.
The company wanted to:
- Coordinate internal and external service activity
- Keep a complete and accessible history of machine service
- Align production planning with maintenance schedules
- Give teams access to up-to-date information, regardless of location
The Solution
Makula was introduced within the Glave Group to support service processes between two key companies in the organisation:
- NLT Automation GmbH, which acts as the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), building machinery used across the group and for external clients
- Norder Band AG (NB), which operates as a production facility and internal customer of NLT, using machinery developed by its sister company
Before Makula, communication between the OEM and factory teams was handled through a mix of systems and manual processes. It was difficult to track machine issues, service actions, and upcoming maintenance across the group.
By using Makula, the Glave Group now manages this internal customer-supplier relationship with the same structure and traceability as an external service process.
Key improvements:
- For NLT (the OEM): Makula is used to document service actions, respond to support requests from NB, and manage planned maintenance on machinery they’ve delivered
- For NB (the factory): Maintenance teams create work orders, log service needs, and view full machine histories through a single system
Both teams operate within Makula, using shared data and workflows to coordinate service activity. This allows NLT to treat NB as a structured customer while still maintaining full visibility and control across internal operations.
The same tools used to serve external clients are now applied to internal relationships, creating consistency across all service activity within the group.
Makula also provides:
- A shared machine history that logs every interaction
- Clear scheduling tools for managing upcoming service work
- A mobile app that allows on-site staff to submit and update work from anywhere
- Role-based access control to manage visibility across teams and companies
The Impact
The Glave Group now manages internal maintenance between companies with the same level of structure and traceability as external customer support.
By using Makula across both NLT (the OEM) and NB (the operator), the group has:
- Established a clear service relationship between internal teams
- Reduced friction in planning and delivering maintenance across company lines
- Gained visibility into machine performance and service status in real time
- Improved how service data is captured, shared, and used for decision-making
- Created a unified system for managing both internal and external service activity
Maintenance requests from NB are now tracked in the same structured way as external service cases. NLT has a full view of ongoing responsibilities, and NB can easily submit, monitor, and review work orders without switching tools or chasing updates.
The shift to a shared platform has not only improved coordination — it has created a more transparent and accountable service process across the Glave Group as a whole.
In Their Words
