EPLAN Engineering Center in operation

Ripploh Elektrotechnik GmbH has automated the design and production of enclosures consistently. Whereby they used a virtual component modular system that is stored in the EPLAN Engineering Center (EEC) as the backbone. The result: The processing times were reduced markedly while increasing the quality. "The consistent solution": This is the title of the company brochure with which Ripploh Elektrotechnik GmbH in Ostbevern presents itself. Consistency is a hallmark of the company that designs switch- and controlgear systems for indus-trial purposes. Andreas Ripploh, a graduate engineer and since 1995 managing partner in the company, has consistently focused on automation and initially con-centrated on production.

First step: Automating enclosure production

This stood to reason since the Westphalian company was originally purely an "extended workbench" for enclosure production – and increasingly has to compete against Eastern European companies. Andreas Ripploh: "We develop automation systems, but do not ourselves use the advantages offered by automation." There-fore the company invested in a CNC unit that machines the housing of the enclo-sure. Which even continues working after work in a "workerless shift" – not only saving time and manpower, but also ensures uniform appearance of the enclo-sures. After the experience made with CNC machining, the company took the next step: An automated cable preparation first determines the exact cable length from the wire parts list of the routing program that is integrated in the ECAD system. The system then cuts the cables directly to length and also places the connection elements. At the same time the cables are labeled in accordance with the drawing. The individual conductor labeling simplifies wiring notably, since the production workers save a lot of time, as they do not have too look at the diagram. And should an item still be missing, it can be installed subsequently without any prob-lems: The cables quasi assign the slot to it. These steps have made the work much more structured. Andreas Ripploh: "We now work much faster and, as far as the costs go, we can hold out against our competitors from Poland and the Czech Republic, for example, and play out our advantages of flexibility, customer proximity and speed."

The next step: Automation in engineering

In parallel Ripploh is extending the engineering – and is also focusing on automation here. Andreas Ripploh: "The enclosure production customers are plac-ing increasingly higher requirements on flexibility and speed. In part we are work-ing with processing times of ten days. This means: We cannot afford to make mis-takes, have to work very structured and certainly do not have any time to reinvent the wheel." It was therefore a logical step for the CAE user to structure the electrical engi-neering design more systematically using the Engineering Center (EEC). The EEC allows the configuration and parameterization of machines or plants on a functional module level. This applies not only for electrical engineering design, but can also be extended to other disciplines such as EI&C technology or the PLC programming. Once these functional blocks have been defined, the designer can call them up simply by pressing a key and assign the desired parameters, such as the performance data. Thus the Ripploh engineers can, for example, access func-tion modules such as the frequency converter interface or the direct drive. From these blocks, in return, customer-specific projects can be generated automatically.