Powerful Programmable Controller Improves Diagnostics Podcast

hello this is dan ayber principal at the a bear agency today we're interviewing ron mead the ceo at machine builder casa herrera in pomona california ron has been at casa herrera for 15 years before joining the company ron spent 30 years in the dairy industry he started as a machine operator and progressed through various positions including supervisor plant superintendent plant manager director of engineering and finally the director of manufacturing for the western division of baskin robbins ron why did your company feel a need to upgrade the control system for your next generation tortilla production line well dan basically we're trying to stay with state-of-the-art controls for our equipment as things developed we saw the needs to help the end user with diagnostics and also the operator interface to handle situations as they develop the new system allows for a lot more just looking at all the different uh parts of the line on a continuous basis to give real-time feedback so the new system provides a much improved operator interface improving the operator experience it also provides superior diagnostics which helps from two standpoints one is the maintenance people have to maintain the production line at your customers facilities and i would unders assume it also helps your company when you're doing remote diagnostics on the system exactly yeah that that really helps us um to help the customer and and it's a real time saver instead of having to load somebody onto a plane and have them go out and hook up you know we can do it through the internet look at it real time and uh you know get feedback from the customers we help them make changes to correct any situations that may be arising form so your upgrade um you determined you needed to upgrade to improve the operator interface improve the diagnostics uh improve remote access were there also some performance issues that you wish to address and improve upon oh yeah absolutely the speed of the new system and its capability of looking at all of the different points that we wanted to look at so quickly allowed us to do some some things mechanically that we can do simultaneously and and get feedback to make certain that everything is functioning the way that it's supposed to with the older system it wasn't quite fast enough and when we were trying to do a lot of things simultaneously we found we were limited in number of things we could do because one would overrun the other because of the short period of time that was available the new system affords us plenty of time to look at all those issues so the increased speed helps you with synchronization and coordination of various parts of the production line among the different machines and among the different operating aspects of each of the machines yes absolutely now you determined that your existing control system was not going to be adequate to do all the things that you wanted to do to help your customers operate their plants and their production lines better so you went into a selection process and can you describe that to us the selection process that your company followed when you were looking for a new control system which really would consist of a new controller a new hmi and a new motor control system yeah just a a step back just a little bit we we try to get continuous feedback from our customer bases to things they would like to see and things that are important to them then we take a look at our equipment and we see how we can integrate those things into a system and how robust that system has to be in order to accommodate all those needs and those were some of the things that we were looking at when we were investigating the opportunity of upgrading a control system i understand and and so your selection process how did that proceed well typically we try to take a look at all of the majors we have had some experience with automationdirect over the last few years we made the choice of moving to that platform sometime back because we thought it was so much easier for the customer on his end to diagnose problems and it was a lot more cost effective than some of the other platforms that are available out there and it had nowhere near the complexity but it offered a lot of speed and feedback there was a benefit to the customer so you found when you compared automationdirect to the alternatives you found superior performance lower cost and simplicity of operation well stated exactly and did that simplicity was that from two standpoints then was that from the design of the machine and the programming of the machine and also the machines i should say and also the operation i i think that it was more the the programs that were embedded in the microprocessor itself and its ability to recognize a lot of stuff which from a programming standpoint you didn't have to go out and create a library and draw that stuff back into the system in order to make everything function properly so there was a lot of things in the system that was intuitive that recognized the components that were being controlled yes the auto recognition was a big benefit uh up front in terms of the tremendous yes well now you have the new control system up and running on the entire tortilla production line you also have some of these systems installed at customer sites what type of advantages are your your customers seeing as compared to the concern system that existed before well one of the things that they like is the robustness if you will of the diagnostics it allows them so much of the interface to go to each one of the portions of the control system and identify if a breaker is tripped or which is a tip off that there's a problem with an overload somewhere and what that overload may be causing it gives them a a direct look to very quickly identify a problem and work on it rather than having to troubleshoot an entire system to find where that problem might be they really appreciate that because it it considerably reduces the amount of downtime downtime on a production line is is you know an exponential number per cost and it seems to me when we were looking at this system that some of the capabilities of the controller were enabling those diagnostics for example the memory that the controller had allowed you to and to scan in pictures those pictures are used to pinpoint specific problem issues there's overlays put on those pictures to identify specific part numbers that need to be replaced and that guides the your customers technical personnel directly towards the source of the problem and also gives them the solution that they need is that a fair summary that's very accurate one of the major advantages there is that you don't need a person who is so technically astute that you can't afford to have them sitting on their hands you know waiting for a problem to develop this stuff is is um pretty recognizable to someone who is is lightly burst in in mechanical or maintenance type operations so it's intuitive enough that it's that it can be maintained by your customers operating personnel and your customers technical personnel without having to need to have a control systems engineer always on standby absolutely and that's that's critical because that's how a lot of plants are operating these days now let's just talk a little bit about your future plans you're going to obviously continue to make improvements and enhancements to your tier production lines and how do you see your new automation direct control system fitting into these plants well we we really see you know some opportunities there we're developing new equipment all the time we've got a a new system that'll be coming out in a couple months here and the uh capability of controlling that on a real-time basis is is really important to us because there are so many functions that are going on so quickly that it's going to really be an important factor uh we'll keep looking at automationdirect as they come up with new ideas and new platforms and we're willing to test those because we have so much confidence in them right now we have a tremendous amount of backup from quantum automation their local distributor here and also from nemco as far as programming and troubleshooting is concerned for getting the initial program proper so that it's it's easily recognizable by an operator so you mentioned three companies that are really involved here we have the supplier who's automationdirect we have quantum automation who's the local evaluated reseller for automation direct and you have memco who's a local systems integrator that did a lot of the design on the control system and their partners and they are you know we we don't claim to know it all but we try to go out and find the best resources that there are available and utilize those resources on a regular basis to improve our product and try to give the customer more bankruptcy buck that makes a lot of sense and in the end that's what it's all about is taking care of your customers well ron thanks a lot and uh we really appreciate your time my pleasure anytime thank you much that concludes our podcast thanks for listening this is dan a bear principal at the a bear agency signing off