EoW September 2013

News Technology

Automation is the key to streamlined manufacturing

▲ ▲ Streamlined manufacturing to reduce costs

required engineering disciplines, ensuring greater speed, accuracy and flexibility in product development and order fulfilment. One of the biggest draws of Eplan P8 is the automatic error-checking features, automated design path suggestions and component selection from the Eplan Data Portal; a comprehensive database of pre-drawn circuits, assembly drawings, function templates and international designations. In total the software has 250,000 part drawings from 48 leading manufacturers including ABB and Festo, among others. “We use Eplan for our control panel projects and it has simplified the design of complex electrical circuits, the integration of PLCs and HMIs and the production of reports such as BOMs,” said Tom Carnell, Bürkert’s engineering systems applications manager. “We are also able to integrate other parts of the control panel project such as manuals, datasheets and Solidworks designs into Eplan, which is then sent to the customer as a PDF upon completion of the project.” Bürkert Fluid Control Systems – UK Website : www.burkert.co.uk Eplan – UK Website : www.eplan.co.uk across all

Companies that invest in innovative computer aided engineering (CAE) systems with automation at their core can streamline operations by reducing costs and liberating employees from the most laborious and tedious aspects of the job. Electrical design is increasingly being carried out by new design tools that allow manual and time-consuming tasks to be performed automatically and instantaneously. As well as delivering cost savings this can significantly improve design integrity and project turnaround times. One company adopting this approach is Bürkert Fluid Control Systems, a manufacturer of control and measuring systems for fluids and gases. The company’s products have a wide variety of applications and are used in a number of industries such as water treatment, hygienic processing, gas handling and microfluidics. In re-evaluating its software and design needs Bürkert turned to Eplan, UK, for its CAE software. The company employed several Eplan tools, such as Electric P8 and the Eplan Data Portal, to help improve its design efficiency, productivity and accuracy. As one of the leading electrical design suites, Electric P8 software contains all the design tools and report generators

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September 2013