Industry: Medical Equipment Manufacturing

Services and Materials Provided:

• Project management
• Electrical design and application
• RFID readers and tags appropriate for the clean room environment
• Ethernet network communications
• DeviceNet network communications
• Panel shop assembly
• CAD drawings
• Startup services
• Operator interface to view system status and details

Situation Analysis

The customer had a clean room environment for the manufacture of surgical instruments.  This environment did not lend itself well to the tracking that was required for these devices as they moved from one step in the process to the next.  The customer required specific data from each step in the process as well as verification of certain key parameters which impacted quality and their ability to sell the products due to governmental regulations.

Technical Details

Applied Technologies designed, programmed, installed, and commissioned a new control and data collection system to meet this customer’s unique needs.  The system tracked time, temperature, and other key variables in each step of the process without interfering with the clean environment.  It allowed the customer to maintain data integrity and to have proof of this data without manual intervention – thereby saving a great deal of paperwork and potential human error.  Since the system was tracked using RFID, it was also easy to modify when the customer’s process had slight changes.