Industry Focus Metal Products MES solution helps to enhance
Milan-based Legnano Teknoelectric Company specialises in electrical steel processing that is used to produce magnetic cores for electric transformers - this is done out of four plants within the city. A common problem for these plants was with data sharing as they wanted full data collection and real time reporting. This is where Rockwell Automation’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES) came in
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ith an annual capacity of more than 70,000 tonnes of steel and 25,000 magnetic cores, Legnano
), and feature seven longitu- dinal cutting lines, 30 slit coil horizon- tal cut lines, four packaging lines for semi-finished products, 130 manual assembly benches for cores, and 120 quality measuring systems.
Gianluigi Bertelli, Legnano
Teknoelectric Company manager and son of Legnano Teknoelectric Company’s founder Michele Bertelli, commented, “The increasing cost of raw materials is intruding on our mar- gins, and our competitors are perform- ing aggressively with pricing policies. While our customers appreciate the top quality of our products, in order to keep them, we have to meet their rising needs in terms of cost reduction, on-time delivery and export chal- lenges in extra European markets.” In the last five years, Legnano
Teknoelectric Company has invested to increase the level of automation of its cutting and assembly lines and adopted new IT technologies to digitalise all company operations - from finance to production. The continuous invest- ment in R&D, new materials and state of the art technologies has reduced pro- duction time and improved quality and throughput levels across the company’s plants. However, the company wanted more. “Our machinery is already run- ning at maximum speed in cutting and assembly operations, so to ensure con- tinued progress, we need to reduce down-time and scrap production,” con- tinued Bertelli. Legnano Teknoelectric Company also identified room for improvement in the quality inspection process for steel coils and delivery time. Bertelli added, “We need to check the loss, permeability and thickness of the steel in our coils directly on the lines,
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Teknoelectric Company delivers its solutions worldwide. Legnano Teknoelectric Company runs five production plants in total - the four in the Milan area and one in Dubai - to produce steel coils, clamps and rods, and assemble them into mag- netic cores. Taken together, these plants cover more than 930,000ft2 (87,000m2
Opposite: Legnano Teknoelectric Company has built its strong reputation in the electrical design and manufacturing transformer
business through its attention to detail and ability to handle maximum levels of customisation
before we process it further, so we can select the right material for each spe- cific application. We also need to be able to set-up integrated production sites in different worldwide locations because our high speed processing lines don’t make much of an impact with customers when shipping of the final core takes three or four weeks.” The company began to address this need with the opening of a plant in Dubai the previous year. However, multi-branded lines and machinery, as well as differing time zones with the Dubai plant, made production sched- uling and data sharing between the sites difficult.
The need for a new solution As such the company began searching for a solution offering visibility, pro- duction scheduling, automatic data collection and real time reporting. They were looking for a vendor that fully understood their needs and could develop a project execution methodology on a par with the advanced technologies in the com- pany’s selection criteria. What Legnano Teknoelectric Company selected was the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution based on Rockwell Software FactoryTalk ProductionCentre, from Rockwell Automation, with system design, consulting, programming and integration from the Rockwell Automation Global Solution Team. “The ability to understand our needs and the project execution methodology of the Rockwell Automation Global Solutions team were as crucial as their high perform- ing technologies in our selection crite- ria,” Bertelli stated. “In the past, different software providers underesti- mated the complexity of our produc- tion processes and offered unsuitable solutions. The approach by Rockwell Automation was completely different. The Rockwell Automation project leader Valerio Frediani, and the whole Milan office team understood our demands perfectly, developed the most suitable solution for Legnano Teknoelectric Company and worked closely with Alessandro Morelli, Legnano Teknoelectric Company, MES
project leader. We could immediately foresee the potential and excellence of the Rockwell Automation solution.” Legnano Teknoelectric Company wanted to leverage FactoryTalk ProductionCentre MES and operations management software to create seam- less integration between several IT software systems they’d set-up over the previous five years. Since 2008 the company rolled-out SolidEdge 3D CAD, Teamcenter PLM, Microsoft Navision ERP, IBM Cognos business intelligence and IBM File Net enter- prise content management applica- tions. The company needed an MES system capable of direct communica- tion with other IT software wirelessly. Visibility of production processes, precise cost allocation, extension of the MES scope to material quality con- trol and logistic process management were of primary importance when the MES solution was selected, and deter- mined how it would be integrated with other existing systems. FactoryTalk ProductionCentre soft- ware was directly connected to Navision ERP through web services. At the same time, the MES software ‘talks’ to the production lines in the different plants, gathering data directly from multi-branded PLCs in the field to manage and efficiently track materials and orders.
Streamlining For Legnano Teknoelectric Company, FactoryTalk ProductionCentre MES software replaced a paper and spread sheet-based system to collect line per- formance data. Prior to the MES imple- mentation, the company was using an Excel system and scheduling produc- tion based on random sample evalua- tions. Order schedules were managed manually through spread sheets and required a large amount of time and resources. The MES solution allows the company to track working processes, scrap and waste, creates automatic production scheduling and provides enhanced visibility into pro- duction. Each employee has access to information most relevant to their role - from production to purchase and sales departments to top management. The bi-directional integration
SEPTEMBER 2013 Automation
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