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July, 2015
Changing CAEs Leads to Major Workflow Improvements
By Gerald Scheffels T
oday’s manufacturers rely heavily on com- puter-aided-design (CAD) tools to achieve success on the production floor. Not only can
such tools make engineers more productive, but they can help with production workflows and make an entire electronic manufacturing facility more effective and efficient. One supplier of such CAD software is EPLAN Software and Services LLC. Their tools and guidance have helped improve the work flow of electronic manufacturer Curt G. Joa, Inc. of Sheboygan Falls, WI . Founded in 1932, Joa is an original equipment
manufacturer (OEM) of manufacturing systems for personal hygiene products, such as like disposable diapers and adult incontinence products. Joa’s prod- ucts are built on miniature production lines and re- quire many process steps. One of the latest production lines assembles
light incontinence products at maximum rate of 1000 units/ minute. Building such a machine is a significant undertaking; each is based on a stan- dard design that is modified according to a cus- tomer’s selection of options. A design may require months to complete. The benefits of EPLAN’s software help Joa
streamline preproduction steps and raise produc- tion output without adding engineering staff. For some companies, these benefits can streamline an entire order fulfillment process and provide a com- petitive edge. The benefits include:
l Shortened delivery lead times. l
More reliable production scheduling.
l l l
More efficient workflows and procurement decisions.
Opportunities for standardizing and reusing design content.
Improved collaboration among stakeholders.
Trimming Design Time Before Joa adopted the EPLAN Electric P8 de-
sign program in 2006, its electrical engineers used Zeinemann explains: “In the past, it took us
hundreds of hours to write the PLC code, but now we can wait until our machines have power for six weeks before we start writing code.” He added: “Now we can wait a lot longer into the design process and give the customer more opportunities to make changes, which also gives our mechanical en- gineers more time to work. Now, our trigger is the lead time necessary for our hardware vendors to supply the start of production.” Joa’s engineers also archive templates in the
Manufacturers upgrading to a database-cen-
tric CAE benefit from more efficient workflows and more reliable production scheduling.
an ultraconservative approach to fulfilling an order. Kevin Zeinemann, Engineering Manager, volun- teers that “The electrical engineers didn’t feel com- fortable unless they began programming immediate- ly,” said Kevin Zeine mann, Engineering Manager. In addition, software engineers began writing code as early as possible, but as details of the project changed out of necessity, customers required revi- sions, and documentation and code had to be re- worked. Joa estimated at least a 30 percent savings in design time by switching from their prior CAD system to the EPLAN Electric P8 system. Design engineers at Joa discovered the possi-
bilities of a different approach when they added the optional EPLAN Schematics Generator (now part of EPLAN Engineering Configuration One, also known as EEC One) four years after adding the EPLAN Electric P8 CAD system. The capability to automate the creation of schematic diagrams while using the same spreadsheet data to automate the creation of software code has been an enormous time saver for Joa, allowing work to be performed in a logical, sequential fashion.
EEC One schematic generation tool for each basic model. These templates are configurable for vari- able design components, such as power supplies, Ethernet switches, breakers, supporting terminals, and other function blocks that may change from one customer to the next. These basic design templates can be modified
for the number of junction boxes, operator stations, sensors, and valves — in short, everything needed to generate machine wiring diagrams. For the drive panels, an electrical engineer with input data from the mechanical engineers creates a spreadsheet list- ing all servomotor requirements, including part numbers, part locations, and safety groupings.
Expediting Enclosures Engineering Coordinator Bruce Davey relates
the importance of the EEC One schematic genera- tion tool: “We take that spreadsheet and import everything into EEC One. This information is tied to another set of EEC One macros with all the vari- ables embedded, which in turn will create schemat- ics for one, two, three, four or five drive panels.” Davey adds: “Each drive panel contains an average of 50 servo motors control-wise, so we might have 100, 150, 200, 250 motors on a machine. It used to be a rule of thumb that if 200 pages of schematics were needed, it would take an hour per page to create, so
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