I spent the last two weeks working for one of my long term clients, Niehoff, at the site of their customer Reka Cables in Finland.
Reka, whom are a market leader in electrical cable manufacturing, took delivery of the first ever D2002 double twist stranding machine produced by Niehoff, and have been testing and evaluating it in production since.
Along with my Niehoff colleague, and through a combination of PLC and visualisation program optimisation, and both electrical, and mechanical improvements, we were tasked with simplifying the operator experience, and improving the efficiency of the automated spool changing process.
It was a very successful two weeks, and not only did we fix some known issues with the machine, but we also came up with some really clever ideas to ensure that time spent changing out full coils was significantly reduced.
We even received word of a nice email which was sent from the bosses at Reka, to the bosses at Niehoff, to tell of their satisfaction with our work. A very nice, and much appreciated gesture.