The Morton Welding Company, located in Morton, Illinois USA, has grown to annual sales exceeding $60 million and employs over 500 people.
MWC provides: precision machining of complex components, tubular fabrication, difficult sub-assembly and assembly, design and build of tooling and fixturing, all for leading global manufacturers.
At Morton, the production line management personnel use AKCP’s securityProbe to monitor their massive, state-of-the-art production line for all 3 of their rotating work shifts.
Morton Weldings production line consists of several work stations and stop points including a large paint furnace.
The AKCP securityProbe is positioned close to the production line, where it monitors downtime and line speed for their 3.5 Million BTU Power Coat Furnace. This process involves manually loading and unloading finished parts. They are using the securityProbe to log down time and the speed of the line to an SQL Database using Kiwi Syslog Daemon to capture Syslog Messages.
There are E-Stop Buttons mounted at various locations on the line and in the paint booths. There is also an E-Stop that is pressed when they are setting up a paint booth to paint or changing colors so they can capture and report on Setup Time. Each E-Stop is tied to a Dry Contact input on the securityProbe. They also have a programmable smart relay in the control system of the paint line that triggers a different relay based on the speed of the line from one to twelve feet per minute.
The production line also heavily relies upon the securityProbes built in mapping feature. They utilize large monitors to display the map and status of their sensors on the production line.
The relays mentioned above are then tied to Dry Contact’s on the securityProbe and displayed across the top of the map so they can see at a glance what speed the line is travelling.
Niles Parr, Morton Welding’s Network Administrator says:
“For Various reasons the line has to be stopped occasionally. When the line isn’t running we are not painting parts, and if we aren’t painting parts we aren’t making money. AKCP’s product seemed to be the best solution for us. Since all of this is logged to a SQL Database we can report on it and see where the bottlenecks are and figure out how to fix them.”
Parr also adds:
“In addition to reporting on the data, we have the large LCD mounted on the Line showing the real time Map view so Supervisors can see at a glance what speed the line is running and what E-Stop is pushed. We also run an automated Crystal Report that displays historical shift data updated every five minutes. This is displayed on another large LCD TV on the line so employee’s can see how they are doing compared to the previous shift.”
Morton Welding also uses two temperature/humidity sensors connected to the securityProbe that monitor overall room temperatures. The parts they are painting are very susceptible to rust and they have to be aware of the temperature and humidity, especially during the summer months and change their processes to maintain their quality standards. Each probe is located at opposite ends of the room.
Another great example of how AKCP’s advanced environmental monitoring equipment can be integrated into any industry and help increase efficiency within complicated and precise processes.
