Feature Panel Building
Don Electrical Services, a company providing specialist products and services to customers in remote locations in Scotland, is receiving support from the RS Components Flexible Pricing team to help meet the demands of its customers
on Electrical Services is a small family business based in Aberdeen, supplying a range of electrical systems and services to
its clients in the food, fishing and oil industries throughout Scotland. The company’s electrical manager,
Bill Benzie, a man with over 35 years experience in the build and design of control systems for industry, was very clear about the wants and needs of Don Electrical’s client base. “Our cus- tomer base consists of business to business (B2B) clients in the food, fishing and oil industries. These are established and traditional industries that requires high quality installa- tions and no-frills, dependable sup- porting services, day after day. “We design, build and install control
panels, monitoring and thermal imaging systems, remote dial-in and in fact, pretty much any system our customers specify that requires continuous and reliable remote access. Alongside the supply of these panel products we also provide 24 hour support and break- down services.”
Maintaining growth Panel building and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) now account for over 60% of Don Electrical’s business and
All part of the service D
currently, the company has two or three control panel system installations underway at any one time. This is where the RS Components Flexible Pricing (FP) team comes in. RS are the main component supplier to Don Electrical and it is the FP team who negotiates discounts from list prices and raises the level of customer support by looking at the customer’s costs from a more strategic perspective. Once the purchasing patterns are
properly identified, through a one on one relationship with an appointed FP team member, RS can take owner- ship of delivering to the customer’s
New HMI for machine builders The KPD202-501 operator panel is easy to fit and set-
up, and once mounted it has an IP65 protection rating. The only connections that are needed are a 24V DC power feed and the desired communications link. As standard, the panel is equipped with a CANopen port, which offers a choice of D-type and RJ45 plug-in connectors, and a user selectable RS232/485 serial port. No special programming software or tools are required
B
aldor Electric has added a compact IP65 rated operator panel with a CANopen interface to its range of motion
control products. The new KPD202-501 panel features a backlit 4-line x 20
character LCD surrounded by six programmable function keys, enabling unambiguous, and actionable, multiple choice menus to be presented to the machine operator. A further 15 keys are provided for the input of numeric
values, together with four pairs of keys which can be used for functions such as jogging individual machine axes.
16
- the KPD202-501 can be programmed direct from the motion controller to which it is connected, using Baldor’s Mint programming language An optional plug-in I/O expansion module is also
available which provides four optically isolated digital inputs and four optically isolated digital outputs. Each of these can be operated over the CANopen bus as standard DS401 remote I/O, for use with ancillary devices such as pushbutton interfaces and indicator lamps. The inputs can be configured as PNP or NPN, whilst the outputs are PNP only. Baldor UK
www.baldor.com T: 01454 850 000
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Below: for Don Electrical, reliable components with delivery close to point of use are essential if real time 24 hour field servicing demands are to be met
longer term volume forecasts and demands wherever possible. In the case of Don Electrical, its real time needs have also been taken into account - the services offered by the FP team have enabled a move away from an ad-hoc to a much more ‘regu- lar and often’ purchasing pattern. Benzie commented, “Almost all of
our services are dependent on the real time availability and delivery of high quality, reliable components. We have grown very confident in RS’s ability to provide this level of support at very competitive prices. This in turn means we can deliver systems and maintain 24 hour customer support with ever grow- ing confidence levels, while doing so at lower cost, which is a recipe for growth and success at Don Electrical.”
A new business model The new approach has seen RS’s share of the component spend rise from under ten percent to 80% in approxi- mately six to eight months. In addition, as with RS’s other relatively small cus- tomers, the effect of a FP account man- ager taking on a proportion of the procurement workload,
frees-up
resources within Don Electrical, which can then be re-focussed onto customer demand and support. Since engaging with RS, Don
Electrical has also seen an increase in its confidence in being able to make addi- tional commitments to customers. For example, it has been able to extend its range of products and services as well as improve response times, thus making them more competitive. Benzie concluded, “RS Components
has become very important to us - RS product reliability is very high as it supplies quality OEM sourced prod- ucts and we feel we can really count on its deliveries. We know that if it states products are in stock, then they will genuinely be available for imme- diate delivery. This is in contrast to our experience with other suppliers who are located near to us in this ‘more distant part’ of the UK, but as a consequence are quite far from their own suppliers. The result is that when they say a product is ‘in stock and available’, this can frequently not actu- ally be the case, as they are not pre- pared to bear the cost of ordering and holding stock in advance, to cover unpredictable demand. “Under these circumstances, and
when we are promoting 24/7 support and breakdown services, delivery can be more important than price. However, with RS Components as our prime sup- plier, we know we have a solution to both of these concerns.”
RS Components
rswww.com T: 0845 850 9900
Enter 209 MAY 2011 Electrical Engineering
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