"Creating a configurable control cabinet reduced engineering and delivery time by nearly 50 percent," says Kevin Weaver, president at Northwind Air Systems, manufacturer of the DuroVac brand of industrial vacuums in Mississauga, Ontario. Weaver collaborated with engineers at Eaton over about four months to create a proprietary software application that simplifies the sales, quoting and ordering process and helps expedite the design, engineering, drawings and delivery of the control cabinet for DuroVac’s industrial central vacuum systems.
"Creating a configurable control cabinet reduced engineering and delivery time by nearly 50 percent," says Kevin Weaver, president at Northwind Air Systems, manufacturer of the DuroVac brand of industrial vacuums in Mississauga, Ontario. Weaver collaborated with engineers at Eaton over about four months to create a proprietary software application that simplifies the sales, quoting and ordering process and helps expedite the design, engineering, drawings and delivery of the control cabinet for DuroVac’s industrial central vacuum systems.
- Kevin Weaver, DuroVac
"I set out to create a system that could quickly configure and cost a control cabinet and the equipment to meet specific application requirements,” says Weaver. "We developed a configurable motor starter control cabinet with set costs and set discrete relay logic and drawings that are created based on options selected during the sales quoting stage with the design controlled by AutoCAD and proprietary software (Figure 1). Simply add the options, and drawing layers are toggled on or off in the AutoCAD drawing, creating drawings instantly. This led to a 10-day improvement in our ability to give approval drawings to our customers — 10 days faster than basically anyone else in the world."
Since its inception in 2000, Northwind ships hundreds of 10-to-250-hp vacuum systems each year (Figure 2). Most custom fabricated systems are shipped in six weeks, including fabrication drawings.
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