Solving Real Problems: Kraft’s IIoT Lab Experience

Duane, an operations manager at Kraft and a colleague of his visited the new Industrial IoT Lab at EECO’s Richmond branch.

EECO has been working on a lab for customers to try out new products and have an interactive zone where they can brainstorm how to overcome their unique challenges, and make their plants operate more efficiently and intelligently.

A longtime customer of EECO, Duane knows the company and Rockwell Automation well. Duane came to visit the lab to give us first-hand feedback and suggest how to make this state of the art lab better for themselves – along with other customers who visit in the future.

Both EECO and Duane walked away with much more.

Duane found out about new products he did not know existed. He walked away learning that he could have saved an incredible amount of time – sometimes even a full day’s worth of work by using ThinManager.

“If I would have done this a while ago with ThinManager, I could’ve saved a ton of time and money on infrastructure. We had to go and put another server in with more memory because we’re running so many images. ThinManager will allow us – our system – to operate faster and more powerfully. With this new software If I need to make a change, I can make it at one location and everybody gets it. It frees up my time – sometimes I’d spend a day patching up images. They’re a lot of other things that we can and need to be spending our time on.”

Duane gets tasked with doing investigations on all the FactoryTalk diagnostic logs when a batch is bad. He currently must go back in to look and see if it’s an equipment error or human error. At his visit to EECO’s Industrial IoT Lab in Richmond, Duane got to first-hand experience playing with the QR code technology, which can be implemented on a machine’s panel so that if a batch is bad, you can simply walk up, scan the QR code and it will automatically tell you what is wrong and why the batch is bad.

When asked if it saved you time by visiting the Industrial IoT lab, Duane responded,

“Coming here today saves time on the learning curve. We were a little skeptical about ThinManager. After our visit, we will buy this product. The lab drove it all home because we saw in person how we can use it in our facility.”

Coming to the IIoT Lab convinced Duane of the solution.

EECO is overjoyed the Industrial IoT Lab experience will help Duane’s plant move forward with the best products.

Duane finished up his lab visit with a final note.

“If you would’ve come to us in the plant, we may not have pulled the trigger as fast. I couldn’t have given you over 30 minutes. It is very important that we are out of the plant”.

Let’s think together.

Contact us today to plan your visit to the Industrial IoT Lab.