Selling products for the process automation industry.

My trading partner was impressed by my great knowledge of automation and my ingenuity. So, I was asked to handle several small and mid-size projects with the goal to automate several tasks that were done by human workers. In some areas it was about increasing the speed of the tasks, others had the background of uncomfortable working conditions for the workers.

One of our bigger projects at that time was the development of an actuator with complete control hook-up to move inlet guide vane (IGV) at turbo compressors. Company was known as Mannesmann DEMAG. The engineers and operators argued about the insufficient performance and reliability of their so far used products. Since the German engineering gene has always lived in me and so it was a great pleasure for me to engineer a solution for this issue.

With the acquisition by SIEMENS around the millennium, we standardized that product, and we became the single source supplier for the actuators including the complete hook-up and optimal configured controller for well over five hundred turbo compressors.

They wanted to strongly accelerate the process for the feeding of aluminum sheets. My solution was exactly what they were searching for: Fast, Maintenance-free, Reliable solution.

Thus, it was possible to achieve a hitherto unachieved total cost of ownership (TCO)!

As the solution was easy adaptable to other applications the next step was to move wood panels in a company producing furniture (Wiemann Möbel). By optimizing their solution and utilizing the given area it was physically impossible to move more than 60 panels per minute. By implementing our solution, we were easily able to shift the limit to 80 panels per minute. Additionally, we were able to significantly lower the operating costs!

By further improving this automation application I finally created the ProChain® automation solution. With this step ahead it is not only able to move different type of products fast and cost-efficient but also to perform an incredible variety of tasks during the movement.

For example, during the packaging of food, a ProChain® machine simultaneously performs a pressure test to ensure that the packaging is tight, and the food thus remains protected.