Kepware Drives Automation to New Heights

May 23, 2008 – An interview with John Haydock, Control Systems Engineering Manager at Rea Magnet Wire, an End User of Kepware Communications Software. EnterpriseInnovator spoke with John Haydock, Control Systems Engineering Manager with Rea Magnet Wire. Rea Magnet Wire makes wire, as it has since the 1930s -- and as such, it needs to maintain its competitive edge by using new technologies, and streamlining its production processes. Its main product is film insulated magnet wire, which is copper or aluminum wire with an insulating layer on it that is thin and temperature-resistant. It's used in winding wire coils that are used to create magnetic fields used in motors, transformers, and electronic devices. Among the technologies it uses to maintain competitive advantage, Rea Magnet Wire is "an end user for Kepware products. We use their product called an OPC communications driver" to help connect "a system that we use in several of our manufacturing plants that monitors our production equipment. The data is recorded on a plant-wide basis for monitoring and tracking. This allows us to display data in real-time for monitoring the plant and also to save data for historical analysis." Kepware Plays a Key Role As Haydock explained, "the Kepware part is a key piece – we use it to make the communications connection between the software we use to display the data, sold by a GE Fanuc (iFix, Proficy Historian)." Haydock added that "We have standardized on Kepware and their partner Software Toolbox." Haydock described Rea Magnet Wire's use of Kepware products: "Our process data system – PDS – has been evolving for us, over the last ten years. Early on we were using PCs on the plant floor and a multitude of different communications drivers to connect to the various PLCs. A couple things have changed in the last few years that made this system more robust for us – an expansion of Ethernet technologies and controls tools now available for us to connect to plant floor devices over the Ethernet." This enables Rea Magnet Wire to "merge multiple plant floor machines onto a single server. Another change has been standardizing on Kepware as the communication driver because they offer such a large profusion of connectivity to plant floor devices – this greatly simplified our system model." Haydock noted that he is able to communicate from the plant floor devices through Ethernet to a server and its single suite of communications drivers to move data into the GE Fanuc iFix software. The end result has been a life-saver in terms of efficiency, but getting there "can be complex in some older plants where we're dealing with some legacy equipment." As Haydock explained, "We're talking about on the order of 100 devices per plant ranging from a more current PLC with Ethernet communication capability down to single loop temperature controllers. These older devices add difficulty. And while Kepware does not remove the difficulty; they typically have had a solution for us." Managing Change over the Long Run Rea Magnet Wire's been around a long time, since 1933, prior to World War II. As Haydock observed, "the company has been around long enough we actually predate the computer." And that means adapting to lots of change, over a long time period. Sometimes, Haydock noted, "the change is difficult to manage." He described some recent challenges that Rea Magnet Wire has overcome resulting from the complexity inherent in globalization. As he recounted, "two years ago we purchased one of our competitors in the North American market. In recent years, we've seen shrinkage of the magnet wire market in North America because of pressure from motor manufacturers moving to China." He added, "The pressure to reduce production capacity fueled the need for the purchase. Magnet wire has become a commodity product with a lot of competitive pressures from offshore as well as in North America. When this acquisition took place, our executives recognized the need to distinguish ourselves to our customers. One of our strengths as a company has been the use of IT in the manufacturing process. They desire to use this as a competitive advantage." Rea Magnet Wire thus acquired two plants: one in Haydock's home town, Fort Wayne; and the other in Mexico. "It has been a priority for their executives to implement their plant floor manufacturing systems in these two plants. "The information that we receive from our manufacturing process, gives us the ability to manage our process that hopefully will give us an advantage over what our competitors are able to do," said Haydock. IT Eases Expansion Challenges As Haydock explained, "We have taken our Process Data System model that has evolved over time and rapidly deployed it into the two new plants. The role that Kepware plays was key for us to be able to rapidly deploy our system in those plants." With Rea Magnet Wire's expansion, new challenges arise, because they now have five plants running this system in North America. "Keeping up with server obsolescence on a four year cycle becomes fairly involved, not to mention advances in the software and keeping software updates in place." Haydock has been heavily involved in Mexico over the last year to year-and-a-half and finds there is definitely a distinct challenge there. "A lot of my colleagues I coordinate with in Mexico speak very good English. Also, I've been impressed by how well they understand technology – Ethernet, PLCs, etc. However, it becomes difficult when a problem exists. Trying to discern the problem and troubleshoot through the translation of the language can be difficult. Often it requires a photograph to diagnose the problem." Added Haydock: "With the reach of this system into Mexico, it is now global in scope. The system gives the users the ability to visualize the manufacturing processes in real-time in all five of our plants. I can sit in my plant in Fort Wayne and see live data in Mexico. Kepware did not necessarily give us the ability for global visualization, but it plays its part in the chain." Kepware is the piece in the chain that allows the data to flow from the plant floor to the local server. Rea Magnet Wire is using GE Fanuc iFix to provide the visualization. Haydock described his information environment: "Data exists on a server in each plant. All we've done is create the visualization stream that points to that data over the network. It seems marvelous when you look at it, but it was relatively simple for us to build the global view. Because our system had evolved over time, we had done a lot of work standardizing our system design. Simple things like naming conventions require a standard practice to prevent having a collision when multiple plants are tied together." As Haydock recalled, "We spent a lot of time and effort coming up with a standard design with no vision at all that at some point in the future we were going to double the size of our company, and add two plants almost overnight – having done this in advance, we were able to easily export what we had in three plants to two new plants without having to redesign the system. I could not have foreseen we would undergo this kind of expansion, but because of the work we had done previously, we were ready!" Innovation Through Technology Even though Rea Magnet Wire has been around for several generations, it still embraces innovation with the youthful vigor of a startup. Its challenge is to innovate in a manner that leverages its core strengths and its long endurance. As the company recognizes that the product it makes is not changing or developing technogically, Rea Magnet Wire still needs to be competitive in the marketplace by differentiating in other ways, such as in service and quality. Its executives recognize that IT is a way to differentiate the company. "There is a huge interest in doing business and commercializing our business through technology such as from Kepware," explained Haydock. "We have expanded to use the web to develop a competitive edge." "This emphasis on using technology to advance and to innovate a competitive edge in an industry with such deep roots impacts me," Haydock added. The company, and Haydock's manager in particular, were savvy enough to have the foresight to use software communications technology and to leverage it. Haydock, an electrical engineer with industry experience in automation and controls pointed out that many organizations have an engineering department, and someone like himself, a controls engineer, to function within that department. But as Haydock recounted, at Rea Magnet Wire, "my manager (the Manager of Information Systems) reorganized our IT department about five years ago. He could foresee the need to merge IT and the Controls Engineering environments, and I was moved out of a plant engineering role and am now part of the IT department. I spend as much time interfacing with network management folks as I do our plant operations management. To build the trust and manage these relationships, it was imperative for me to become part of the IT group." Added Haydock, "Rea Magnet's use of Kepware as a key component of their production processes has done a terrific job in addressing their device-to-device and bus-to-bus interoperability needs. Kepware communications software is certainly becoming a leading open-standard protocol for industrial applications. It allows SCADA applications to access shop-floor data as an OPC Client." Return to Kepware Solution Chronicles Page »»