Integrated perfectly

Engineering for the special plant construction industry is demanding. For a large, complex plant, there are no off-the-peg solutions and no prototypes. The first draft has to be right: this requires know-how which simply cannot be bought - and completely reliable engineering tools. Höckh Metall-Reinigungsanlagen GmbH in Neuenbürg in the north of the German Black Forest switched over from EPLAN 5.70 to EPLAN Electric P8 for the electrical and fluid design of a newly acquired major project while at the same time using Autodesk Inventor and Vault for mechanical engineering and product data management with the support of EPLAN consultants. The result: Maximum integration and data consistency - and software support from a single source. Höckh had obtained the know-how for the development and production of perfect-fit solutions for parts cleaning and degreasing over its forty years of existence. The medium-sized family-run company, which is already into its second generation, has 50 employees and has made a name for itself as a reliable supplier of quality plant engineering, especially for major projects. Anyone working in the metal processing industry who needs parts cleaned along the process chain in order to separate and machine them, knows they are in the right place at Höckh. The customer portfolio ranges from CNC machiners and manufacturers of turned parts seeking chip or oil removal as an interim production stage, to international companies in the automotive, medical technology and aerospace industries needing to meet exacting cleanliness requirements for complex safety parts. Smooth transition at full workload
One example of the service portfolio is the large plant for deep-drawn stamped sheet metal parts recently produced on a 3,200m² production area in Neuenbürg near Pforzheim. Five engineers have been working on the project since September 2011. The overall planning was the responsibility of Managing Director Michael Höckh, Fabian Camek, the electrical engineering manager, took on electrical design and pneumatics, and Josip Heger looked after the design department. The plant has ten enclosures, and Fabian Camek counted over 700 pages of schematics to be produced; with a total of 16,800 parts to be processed in CAD, according to Josip Heger.
The latest technologies and refined processes and control engineering were used. User login - with different permissions - and product identification by means of RFID were part of the project, as were user-friendly touch panel controls and a complex safety system using light grids. All movements are frequency-controlled, so a large number of frequency converters were fitted, explains Fabian Camek, in relation to the variety of devices used: "We used all the bus standards there are."
In order to keep this complex project under control, the Höckh team went about the job properly: with the order books full and while work on the current major plant was under way, the electrical construction was switched to EPLAN Electric P8 with the EPLAN Fluid add-on for pneumatics construction. Fabian Camek reports that, with EPLAN's thorough support, the step took just a couple of months: "We brought EPLAN consulting in several times for P8 and EPLAN Fluid, twice for a whole week at a time; we were also supported by the helpdesk. This meant we could effect the transfer in a total of two months. Enormously easier with the EPLAN Data Portal
Naturally, it took some outlay to redesign all the materials and build up the parts database intelligently. But the preliminary work pays off as it allows full use of all the benefits of the EPLAN platform, explains Fabian Camek. The EPLAN Data Portal made and makes things enormously easier for him: components, for example those from Siemens, can be easily imported as macros in edz format, with multilingual parts data and consistent, uniform product diagrams and schematics. This eliminates error sources and significantly accelerates configuration and design. There are only a few specialist parts for which the macros need to be written specially.
Back in November, the databases had been largely set up and Fabian Camek's team has been working fully with EPLAN Electric P8 since January, with pneumatic design now fully integrated thanks to EPLAN Fluid. High level of automation for goods transport is one of Höckh's trademarks; with high levels of data consistency in the design being all the more important to ensure that air hoses and electric lines fit perfectly and every switch or container in the schematic or pneumatic diagram has the same designation. Support from a single source
At this stage of integration, Fabian Camek and mechanical design manager Josip Heger did not want to stand still. They used the up-coming switch to EPLAN Electric P8 as the "big solution" allowing them to optimise tools for mechanical design. Höckh now uses Autodesk Product Design Suite with the Autodesk Inventor 3D CAD solution and the Autodesk Vault PDM system. "We opted for EPLAN for the ongoing service and support of these tools because they can provide a one-stop shop," underlines Josip Heger. If the system is maintained by a range of different providers, "one always blames the others when things go wrong," so a one-stop shop is a single responsible contact.
Given the complexity of the switch, the support from EPLAN has definitely paid off, the design manager believes. In the past, they had switched over to a better system a few times, so the data structure was not consistent, but the project data needed to be available "even for our old plants, some of which have been in use for 25 years, for services, upgrades and spare parts deliveries". Vault as central data store
In the architecture designed with the help of the EPLAN consultants, all drawings, CAD models and other product documents are managed and assigned under Autodesk Vault; the aim is that the whole company, including electrical planning, stores all the documents centrally in Vault and everyone in the company has access as a function of their permissions.
In the medium term, all planning of measurement and control technology is to be integrated with EPLAN PPE via the EPLAN platform alongside electrical and pneumatic design. The idea behind it is to make all changes consistently visible across all tools - "we are working on this with EPLAN". Data flow - totally consistent
Thanks to the tailored implementation with support from EPLAN, the individual tools work perfectly together. Meaningful 3D designs from Autodesk Inventor not only make customer communication easier from the preliminary configuration phase through to order placement, which is important in large plant construction where prototypes and modules can only be produced as computer visualisations. Electrical design is also easier, if it can access the Inventor models via the central data store and extract decisive information.
Parts lists for all projects and orders can be generated from the EPLAN database. For Michael Höckh, this not only means quicker, more accurate project implementation: "We can also produce sensible recalculations using our ERP system, because every single part appears in the documentation. "Handshake" with software development
The four-man software department which programmed the plant controller also benefits from useful EPLAN tools, as Fabian Camek explains: "I don't need to press 700 pages of design plans into the programmers' hands, I can simply share a list of inputs and outputs generated in EPLAN - so everything is consistent. Inputs and outputs are named in the same "language" based on the consistent dictionary - which is another reason why the "handshake" with the software department works so smoothly. The labelling of devices such as signs or valves is fully automated to thermo-printers or laminating film based on EPLAN forms. Text can be output in various languages - which is important for a company such as Höckh which supplies many plants abroad which need to be labelled in the relevant national language.
Has the huge effort paid off? Definitely, according to managing director Michael Höckh: "A huge amount of time and effort and a not insignificant investment has gone into technical equipment and training - if you do it, you need to do it right and consistently in accordance with our company philosophy."