Recently, EDC has completed a number of diverse projects featuring remote monitoring systems. From a golf course to a power plant to a traditional manufacturing facility, remote monitoring systems can streamline operations and help avoid costly downtime while providing a quick return on investment.
Remote Monitoring for Golf Course Watering Systems
The Wild Turkey Golf Course at Crystal Springs Resort in Hamburg, NJ, was facing a problem. If their automatic watering system pump went down in the middle of the night, their ground crew wouldn’t be able to see the alert until the morning. At that point, golfers are already on the greens and watering can’t be done as thoroughly and heavily as needed. In the golf industry, a course’s grass health and quality is one of the most prominent, defining factors of the golf course itself. An intricate watering and irrigation plan is essential to the course’s success.
Joe Luna, an Electrical Project Engineer at Electronic Drives and Controls, was tasked with designing and implementing a pump monitoring system for the golf course to record all the watering data. He implemented equipment failure alerts to notify employees so they can fix the issue more promptly and ensure the grass gets the water it needs before employees and customers arrive each morning. Joe maintained feedback from the programmable logic controller (PLC) and the variable frequency drives (VFDs) on the pump motors and used Banner Engineering’s wireless communications to implement a web-based dashboard complete with alarms to remotely monitor these irrigation systems. If the new system detects a pump failure, it instantaneously sends an automated text alert to the point of contact. The failed pump will now have enough time to be repaired before the morning hours, ensuring enough water to keep the course healthy and in good condition.
Remote Control & Monitoring for NY Power Plant
A local power plant in Middletown, NY was experiencing communication outages to their offsite pump house. An integral part of the plant’s operations, the pump house utilizes treated water from a local wastewater treatment facility as makeup water for the steam generator in order to make power. The power plant already had cellular modems in place, but they weren’t able to efficiently hold a sustained signal or recover well from the occasional cell tower outage. When the PLCs would lose communications with each other, the pumps would need to be started manually, delaying the critical supply of make-up water.
To solve the problem, EDC added two different cellular network modems to facilitate communication between the plant and the pump houses to turn on the pumps for the makeup water. The pump house can now remotely control operations and communicate with the remote PLCs via cellular network. If the main cell network goes down, the system seamlessly switches to the backup network.
This was a unique remote monitoring and control solution because instead of setting up a dashboard with information, EDC engineers linked up an effective cellular solution, allowing the communication to withstand any kind of cellular issues that arise.
Improving Manufacturing Visibility with a Remote Monitoring System
The SPC Division of the Brady Corporation, a global leader in safety, identification, and compliance solutions makes absorbent products for their industrial customers. The management team at Brady/SPC wanted better visibility into what was happening on the plant floor and to have the ability to pull historical information from their manufacturing information system over an extended period of time. Prior to this project, if a component wasn’t performing properly and operators didn’t happen to notice it, the line could go down for an extended amount of time. For example, a key sub-process is the supply of heated air to the extrusion die. A heating element failure or the supply air not at the proper temperature would lead to failure of the die, significant downtime and the loss of thousands of dollars.
EDC was contracted to implement a remote monitoring system which gathers all run data for more than 200 parameters, the most notable key performance indicators (KPIs) being line speed and extruder temperature and pressure. For more accessible viewing of this data, Brady/SPC installed a large TV screen on the plant floor to view EDC-created dashboards. This information is also available on a web browser so management can monitor production from anywhere with an internet connection on computers, tablets, and phones assuring no productivity is lost.
EDC’s remote monitoring system has been a huge success. With the added historian function, plant personnel have the ability to look at past manufacturing data to increase efficiency and plan preventive maintenance. 
Remote monitoring gives operations better visibility and control of equipment which lowers cost and downtime. To learn more about EDC and our remote monitoring services, contact us for your remote monitoring requirements.
