In March 2013, Optima Control Solutions announced the addition of machine vision to its services. Michael Hill, Managing Director of Optima, explained:

“Broadening our portfolio to include vision is an exciting strategic step for Optima. We forecast strong growth in the adoption of vision technologies as the leading manufacturers continue to introduce new products to the market and meet wider and more demanding applications.

Vision technology offers the obvious advantage of reliability in repetitive manual inspection tasks; the applications skills for vision are complex and highly specialist. By possessing the skills to apply the technology expertly coupled with our acknowledged control system engineering ability means Optima can offer clients a single-source solution provider with an impressive breadth of application knowledge.”

Machine vision utilises high-quality imaging methods and has a broad scope of applications for manufacturers such as defects elimination and assembly verification. Optima has already hired two engineers with 20 years of combined experience in vision solutions.

Mr. Hill commented: “As Optima continues to grow vision will play an integral part in our business development. By opening up new markets with new applications we will strengthen our position in the field of systems integration.”

Read more about our machine vision services here

In this article, we discuss whether it is more beneficial to outsource your engineering design activities completely or whether a blend of internal and external skills can offer more of a benefit to your company.

Automated control systems are a critical component in the backbone of modern manufacturing. It is virtually impossible to imagine conceiving a manufacturing process without the help of specialized digital control systems. Their subsequent maintenance is even harder to imagine. Today’s plant managers are faced with the dilemma of either hiring in-house engineering resource or outsourcing the service completely. Often a mix of both is considered the ideal solution. Below we suggest several key issues to consider if faced with forming such a strategy.

1. How big is your manufacturing operation? – Hiring full-time in-house engineers can prove costly if they cannot be fully utilised. Often companies find that once a specific project is completed and the system is “bedded in”, the control system reliability improves reducing any ongoing maintenance needs. Outsourcing the control system design and maintenance resource offers the flexibility and on-demand service sought by smaller companies at a more economic cost.

2. Do you require specialised skills and expertise only for a specific project? – As control system technologies evolve, it is necessary to maintain a company’s in-house engineers awareness and skill levels. This must be a considered investment. Extensive training is often needed which attracts additional cost to your company. Outsourced engineers need to stay at the forefront of engineering technologies to ensure their own sustained income and spread the cost annually across multiple projects.

3. How complex is the project and what risk does it carry? – Modern, high-feature control equipment cannot be upgraded using traditional methods. To attempt to do so without the specialist knowledge required may result in higher costs and running over budgeted times. Outsourced system integrators have a wealth of experience providing better guarantees on the methods used to update equipment and thus will lower the overall risk.

4. Health & safety and risk mitigation – Only the control equipment designed to meet a company’s health and safety obligations match the complexity of today’s regulations. The ability to engineer a compliant system is a legal requirement and not to be underestimated.

5. Project time-scales – It goes without saying that control system upgrades require machine downtime to accommodate installation and commissioning activities. Automation companies have the benefit of project teams that can effectively reduce machine downtimes significantly.

6. Collaboration is key – Ideally, as mentioned above, a combination of an internal project engineer or team working closely with the outsourced project design and delivery company works better for a successful delivery and ownership of a project. Making sure both teams cooperate closely and trust each other is essential. Information flow, clarity of objectives and clear design principles are three pre-requisites that will ensure good project management and mutual understanding.

7. Does the integrator understand your business? – A steep learning curve  should be expected at the start of every project for any external engineering team whilst acquiring detailed knowledge of the application. Establishing long standing business relationships, based on performance and trust gained over numerous collaborative projects will promote a better understanding of the clients’ processes for the integrator. This understanding will bring real time and cost savings together with a level of trust that makes working together more natural.

Optima Control Solutions, the industrial automation specialist company, has established its reputation as a reliable and very expert turnkey solution provider. Their client portfolio includes a number of industry leading companies such as The API Group, Tensar Manufacturing and Tullis Russell Papers.

A less well known fact about Optima is the high level of service support it provides to its customers and partners. Perhaps because in 2011 – 2012 from a client base of over 600 customers and thousands of installed applications, Optima’s engineers spent a total of just 74 days on urgent service visits, a testament to the inherent reliability of the systems they engineer.

It is a fact that the complex nature of the projects that Optima engineer requires specialist application knowledge that few companies can provide; hence, Optima’s responsibilities do not stop at the system handover point. Ongoing system support is critical to all of Optima’s customers, and supporting their control systems requires the same specialist knowledge.

Michael Hill, managing director of the company commented: “We understand how critical productivity is to our customers and consistently offer them the highest level of responsiveness when it comes to breakdowns and control system problems. Optima have engineered hundreds of control systems over the past 18 years. Remarkably, we receive a very low number of breakdown call-outs relating to the systems we design – around 40 per year from over 600 customers.  We know that to our client`s downtime is very expensive and can compromise their delivery obligations. We appreciate the extreme pressures that go with manufacturing – and we respond.”

Recently, a leading paper-making company contacted Optima with a perplexing breakdown problem on a machine originally upgraded by Optima in 2005.

The upgrade project involved the replacement of 90 AC and DC drives and bringing a complex PLC and programmable safety system into line with regulatory requirements.

After a busy shutdown period, during which a long list of work tasks had been completed the subsequent machine start-up was likely to be difficult. Pinpointing the route cause is always more difficult when such a wide range of tasks have been concurrently completed.

Sensitive to the critical role the machine plays within the customer’s plant, Optima installed a remote access system with the machine’s original control system, thus enabling an immediate diagnostic response to the outage.

Liaising closely with the engineers at the customer’s site, Optima followed a number of diagnostic routes. It soon transpired however that the problem was of a very unusual nature, intermittent and with no logical pattern. A site visit was necessary. Liaising with the company’s production team Optima attended site within 12 hours and began a detailed diagnostic exercise.

The intermittent and strange system behaviour resulting from a component failure made it a difficult analysis exercise. Optima’s knowledge of the system and its fundamental control strategy meant they were able to pinpoint and resolve the issue in the shortest time with the minimum production impact.

Optima’s speed of response probably saved the most time and money.

Over the past years Optima has developed an internal system for safety assessment to ensure that all projects are carried out with minimum risk for the customer and Optima’s engineers. The 58-point assessment covers the wide range of hazardous factors including high voltage, fire and noise.

The safety assessment procedure is used at each stage of the control system engineering projects – during the initial surveying as well as during installing and commissioning the new equipment. For each hazardous factor a 3-point scale is used to assess the severity of the potential harm and its likelihood to occur. The overall risk is then estimated based on the simple formula “Risk = Likelihood x Severity”. In cases when safety precautions are out of Optima’s scope, we would require the customer to take responsibility for the control measures used to reduce safety risk.

Mark Turner, Optima’s engineering director, explained: “The system we have developed and used for many years is being continuously improved to comply with the latest safety requirements. Very often we find that customers do not meet the safety standards at the time. We cannot reduce the severity of a hazardous factor but for 99% of the projects we are able to reduce its likelihood of occurring. Our engineers are consistently receiving positive feedback about the level of safety we provide on site.”

 Download the Health and Safety assessment Preview here

 Download Full H&S assessment presentation here

What are the recent challenges in the industrial engineering sector? A quick search on the Internet revealed several ‘hot’ topics in this field. We asked Optima’s experts to share their opinions on these topics. To ensure the variety of opinions, we asked for one member from each department:

– Michael Hill – Managing director
– Colin Keating – Sales and applications engineer
– Aaron Garwell – Electrical engineer

1. Of late there has been a lot of press coverage regarding “designed-in” safety in control systems. In your opinion is this a mere marketing positioning or a key concern for control system designers?

Michael: “Designed-in” safety is definitely not a just a marketing subject. It is something about which we at Optima are very conscious when we engineer control systems. It is vital that control systems provide the best functionality with the appropriate level of safety integrity. Maintaining the ease of operation of a machine is important for companies to achieve the productivity performance that they need but without compromising the safety of their operations personnel.

Colin: “When designing a ‘safe’ machine the safety control system is only considered a secondary measure. The primary objective would first be to remove the danger or design out the risk.”

Aaron: “I feel that safety systems are a must with any engineering design, therefore don’t really see it as a concern but more as a necessity.”

2. In 2011 the robotics sector in the UK grew by 68% – a staggering figure. Do you think such a high growth rate will change the face of industrial automation dramatically?

Michael: “Robots will not dramatically change the face of industrial automation but there will be a noticeable impact upon the shop-floor landscape in businesses where materials handling is a core activity, operations such as end-of-line labelling, component finishing and similar.”

Colin: “No, I think robots are probably becoming more reasonably priced and so can be purchased to do more menial tasks.”

Aaron: “Not directly although I think it will raise interest in the sector from other engineering companies, raising competition with some job quotations.”

3. Sustainability is one of the big problems in the manufacturing sector, or indeed in any sector. How do you feel about commitment to nuclear energy as the way forward? Are we getting carried away with renewables?

Michael: “Sustainability through renewable energy sources is something that concerns us not only within our own business activities but on a general level, too. It is pretty clear that resources are becoming ever more scarce and climate change is a global concern for issue both established and emerging economies.

Rising energy prices affect us all, domestically as well as industrially. The world’s manufacturing output will only increase, the world’s carbon energy resources will only diminish. Renewable energy will only become more important.”

Colin: “The future is in renewables but we need a way to store the energy and that will be done by generating hydrogen and then storing it.”

Aaron: “Nuclear energy has very efficient power output compared to the carbon monoxide produced in comparison to other energy sources like oil, gas, coal. However, the nuclear water remains radioactive for many years, so I do feel we should take advantage of renewable energy.”

4. Could a ‘Made in Britain’ marque help revive the UK’s manufacturing exports? And how would it reflect the reality of the UK’s manufacturing sector?

Michael: UK Equipment has always been associated with quality by the world at large (if we choose to ignore British Leyland of the 1970’s). We cannot ignore the competitiveness of the Far Eastern and Sub-continent manufacturers and we will struggle to match their mass production capabilities. However, there is still a very large demand for high quality, specialist manufacturing that needs to meet the just-in-time culture of our lean, Western economy. We have an unquestionable reputation for technical expertise, advanced manufacturing industries such as aerospace are rooted well within the European, UK and American infrastructures.

The UK is the country of choice for many automotive manufacturers, particularly those born out of the Far East. In favour of the UK, geography is a crucial factor, as are the UK employment laws. Not least, however, is the labour pool’s skill level and the quality of workmanship that is synonymous with the UK. “Made in Britain” is something that the world recognises as a good thing, so we would be foolish not to maximise our strengths.

Colin: “It would be nice to believe it would revive British exports but I do not think so. We need the Bristish way of thinking to change and to buy local rather than buying cheap.”

Aaron: “UK manufacturing does not seem viable unless it is very specialised equipment or services(Optima as an example, of course). Mass produced items from China will still undercut our prices due to cost of labour etc.”

5. According to IoD statistics, fewer women make it through the higher management labyrinth to leadership than merited by their education, capability, credentials and achievements. Is industrial automation an area where female engineers can be successful?

Michael: “Studying engineering at university is becoming less popular for UK students, regardless of gender. Sourcing competent engineers is one of the most difficult elements of running Optima Control Solutions Ltd., as it is for many of our associate companies.

Engineering has moved on from the business portrayed by the traditional images of the 1960’ and 70s. The first thing to note is that technological and political advances make manufacturing and engineering a much more egalitarian sector in which to be employed. As important is the size of the labour pool, which struggles to meet the demand placed on it even now. Education and aptitude are not determined by gender. Not only is the automation industry one where female engineers can flourish, but also we should actively encourage them to do so.”

Colin: “Anyone can make it as an automation engineer as long as they are committed to long hours, extended periods of world wide travel and relatively low wages for these efforts.”

Aaron: “I do not see why not, I do not feel that gender is an issue and everyone should have equal opportunities within the workplace.”