Quick Turnaround Panel Building

On Time/On Budget Control Panel Fabrication

Outsourcing your industrial control panel building requires great attention to detail. Who supplies what? You need to consider logistics for getting parts and enclosures where they need to be. A time frame needs to be established and met. You need to communicate with engineers for drawings, schematics, layout, and ECNs. Finally, you need to address special customer protocols for wiring, labels, terminal blocks, and markers.

Throw in a level of urgency brought about by unforeseeable global events, and you have even more potential challenges.

The Challenge

Our OEM customer needed to modify the design and customize the build of their converting machine. This was necessary in order to meet the critical specific requirements for their end-user customer’s product.

A typical time frame for building this type of industrial control panel equipment is 16-18 weeks. A normal time frame for building panels for a project of this magnitude is 6-8 weeks. However, this needed to be done in 3-4 weeks… with a “drop-dead” due date. Meaning we needed to get it into our schedule within 4-5 days!

The iAutomation Solution

Resourceful Project Management Meets a Seemingly Impossible Project

• An OEM manufacturer needed to modify the design and build of their converting machine in order to provide their customer with multiple machines capable of producing the finished product their customer requires.
• All major components would be supplied by the OEM manufacturer to iAutomation, but we still needed to order customer-specified smaller components, hardware, labels, markers and terminal blocks. Added to this, the design of the panel was still in process.
• Design review and collaboration between the OEM customer and iAutomation engineers was critical to assure proper component sizing, selection, and function for the OEM control panel.
• iAutomation immediately adjusted our production schedule to respectfully accommodate our current work in progress while making room for this fast-turn project.
• Overtime hours would be needed, and iAutomation assemblers were more than willing to support this effort. To minimize overtime costs to our customer, iAutomation used staggered shifts. This strategy helped ensure a smooth transition of work throughout the day, leading to greater efficiency and output. Work was accomplished without imposing an excessive overtime burden on our assemblers. Implementing staggered shifts also favorably impacted the quoted pricing to our customer.
• Constant communication flow was required to keep everyone informed without over-burdening.