Client: FUNKE Wärmeaustauscher Apparatebau GmbH

FUNKE is one of the leading developers and manufacturers of heat exchangers and can already look back on more than 40 years of experience. With 280 employees in Germany and 400 employees worldwide, FUNKE supports customers from various industries throughout the entire process, from calculation and design to the production of customer-specific equipment. Established calculation methods in the areas of process engineering, thermodynamics, strength calculation, and vibration analysis are used. In addition to the production of series devices manufactured in modular system design for standard applications, FUNKE also produces individually according to customer-specific requirements. With the production of safety heat exchangers or sterilization devices according to FDA standards, FUNKE is also able to serve demands from the pharmaceutical and food industry.

Initial Situation and Challenges

For precise calculation of plate heat exchangers, FUNKE uses the self-developed application PHE Designer. It supports users, among other things, in selecting and configuring the appropriate device.
The application is a historically grown project that has already been further developed several times over time and now no longer meets the current requirements for a modern application. For example, the PHE Designer is based on the outdated VC++ 6 technology, and various program versions were created through diverse conditional compilations. In addition, there were still some legacy issues in the underlying code, such as unused code blocks or commented-out code.
To ensure that the PHE Designer continues to function reliably in the future, we have made it our task to update, modernize, and further develop it with new technologies.

“Through the quick and solution-oriented takeover of the PHE Designer by digatus, we were able to handle both minor optimizations and larger new developments and product inclusions without significant effort on our part.”

Michael Sachs – FUNKE Wärmeaustauscher Apparatebau GmbH

Solution

In the first step, we performed a direct update from VC++ 6 to Microsoft Visual Studio 2019. This update forms the basis for further developing and regularly maintaining the PHE Designer with current tools.
The next step was to identify existing legacy issues that were no longer needed after the update and eliminate them. While Microsoft’s migration tool already does a good job of this, it does not replace the thorough, manual clean-up at the end.
In addition to ongoing further developments and bug fixes, gradual refactoring is also part of the tasks. Refactoring continuously ensures the readability, maintainability, and especially extensibility of the existing code. This includes, for example, removing no longer needed code fragments and simplifying the management of different program versions.
Furthermore, we are currently working out a comprehensive modernization strategy in close coordination with FUNKE, which primarily focuses on the use of modern cloud technologies. The goal is to completely redevelop the original PHE Designer in a web interface.

Customer Benefits

The modernization and further development of the existing application initially enables the short-term assurance of the maintainability of the PHE Designer in the first step. This creates the technological basis for successfully implementing the modernization strategy in the next project phase.
The long-term goal of the planned new development in the web interface is to make FUNKE’s data more usable and analyzable, thus securing a competitive advantage in the long run.