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How to Reduce Wiring Costs and Improve Panel Efficiencies eGuide

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls 2 3 6
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Sponsor Profile
ABB Low Voltage Products
ABB Low Voltage Products is a global technology leader that enables product and service OEMs to significantly reduce panel costs, meet global electrical standards, and deliver a reliable and safe electrical solution. ABBs extensive portfolio of Low Voltage Products includes circuit protection devices, distribution, termination, and control products.

Reducing Waste
When utilizing Lean Manufacturing to increase speed and flexibility, reduce costs and improve overall competitiveness, it is important to also look beyond the manufacturing process. Our products address not only the manufacturing process, but also the many opportunities to reduce waste by considering the design of the products being manufactured. Cut costs by

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

addressing the three main sources of waste: cost, time, and physical space. Our products were designed to help you reduce your panel size with small, low profile products and closely coupled solutions, and reduce downtime and lower maintenance costs due to their smart design and extreme reliability.

Global Certifications
ABB Low Voltage products can be supported in over 100 countries worldwide, and come with the required worldwide certifications that allow you to standardize on one design to serve all markets.

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CODE CHANGES AFFECT THE PLANT FLOOR

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls The National Electrical Code Typically Views An Industrial Control Panel As A Piece Of Equipment With Proper Installation Being The Major Concern.
By Jack Smith, Senior Editor, Plant Engineering magazine 05/01/2006 Titled the Standard for Safety for Industrial Control Panels, UL 508A covers industrial control panels intended for general industrial use, operating from a voltage of 600 Vac or less. This equipment is intended for installation in ordinary locations, in accordance with the NEC. NFPA 79 is the standard to which machine builders, OEMs and panel builders must build industrial machinery. However, NFPA 70, otherwise known as the NEC, is the standard to which equipment must be installed, which affects you directly. It is important to understand the NEC, as well as the standards and regulations that support it. This understanding becomes critical when adding equipment to your plant. If a short circuit occurs, you want the overcurrent protective device to do its job without worrying whether a contactor or motor starter will act as the fuse, said Todd Lottmann, senior technical marketing engineer at Cooper Bussmann. SCCR is not an interrupt rating; it is a withstand rating. It identifies the first part likely to blow up if a short circuit occurs in certain locations within the circuit. It identifies the weakest link in a single power circuit within an industrial control panel. A panel may contain several branch circuits that are fed from one or more feeder circuits. Circuit configurations affect how SCCR for the panel is determined. to include what is in the panel, how it must function and how it is to comply with existing regulations. It is important to understand NEC requirements in effect in your jurisdiction when specifying equipment. It is also important to understand the requirements of UL 508A especially as it applies to short circuit current ratings. When specifying equipment, one of the first things that plant engineers and managers must determine is available fault current. This should be listed somewhere on the utility bill. But this is just the beginning. If you choose to build your own control panels, defining the specification can be difficult, as can determining SCCR. UL 508A has many requirements beyond SCCR, Lottmann said. These requirements include type of enclosure, conductor ampacity, circuit protection and much more. Building your control panels inhouse is becoming much more difficult that it used to be. An assembly rating is the interrupting rating of everything inside the panel, said Lottmann. When determining SCCR you must determine your interrupting rating, your component rating and whether you can fix your component rating. The ability for a protective device to limit current is the key to enabling industrial control panels to have a higher SCCR. The easy way out is to procure the panel from a listed supplier with thirdparty certification to all applicable standards including UL 508A. I think the best advice I could give is to require that the piece of equipment be listed third-party certified said Jim Pauley, vice-president of industry and government relations at Square D. And when you do that, all the nuances about UL 508A get handled as part of the listing. The NEC does not require the control panel to be listed. But it does require that it has a short circuit current rating. What I think will happen, which could take a couple of years, is that end users will say, Just give me a listed control panel. Ive got 22 kA available fault current; I need a listed control panel that does these things, but carries an SCCR of 22 kA. I think that is ultimately how they will solve their problem, Pauley said.

Short Circuit Current Rating

On April 25, 2001, UL 508A was issued; on April 25, 2006, this requirement became effective. Part of this standard requires short circuit current rating (SCCR) to be marked on industrial control panels. Although UL 508A affects OEMs, machine builders and panel builders directly, it also affects your plant indirectly through the NEC, which does affect your plant directly. When applied to your plant, these rules and codes determine how you specify equipment, how equipment is inspected, the relocation of equipment and equipment maintenance.

Inspection
When a new piece of equipment is installed, it must be inspected before power can be applied. The permit process triggers the inspection. After the inspector is satisfied that the equipment is electrically safe, he or she signs off on the permit and you are allowed to apply power. There are jurisdictions that require an electrical permit when any electrical work other than maintenance and repair is done in the facility, Pauley said. Then that permit triggers the inspection time-line that will occur, and the contractor would call for an inspection (when the work is being

Specification
Most companies contract with suppliers, such as OEMs, machine builders or panel shops, to fabricate control panels to accompany plant-installed machines. Other plants prefer to build them inhouse. Regardless, specifications are required

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done by outside contractors) at certain stages depending the particular work being done. Contractors are very familiar with the inspection system. Getting the inspector in and pulling a permit is pretty routine. When equipment installation is done using a facilitys electrical workers, there typically is a gray area between whether its considered maintenance and repair, or if its considered installation. Pauley said, If I move a machine over 10 feet, is that maintenance work or is that new installation work? Honestly, the local jurisdictions have to deal with it. And I think in a lot of cases where plants do that kind of work, it is treated as maintenance work and probably not inspected. NFPA Article 409 (2005 version) does not outline at all, as a matter of fact the NEC in total, does not outline when an inspection is required, or how you do the inspection, Pauley added. The NEC only outlines the applicable rules for an electrical installation. So the local jurisdiction is really responsible for whats required to be inspected, when is it required to be inspected and who is going to do the inspection. There are examples where cities have agreed with large industrials to do an annual inspection. The plants keep track of the (electrical) work that theyve done throughout the year. When an inspector comes in, he or she may pick some of the particular work that was done and do an inspection on them after the fact. Most jurisdictions for electrical inspectors will say that they can only barge into a facility if there is a known hazard that they are going in to actually resolve. If they get a report that there are all these loose wires hanging down in here and people have been shocked multiple times, the inspector probably has cause to be able to inspect unannounced. But, I dont know of any case where thats been done. The inspector is willing to work with you on all these points. Once a state adopts the code, typically, no one is exempt except the electrical utility. But, whether it is inspected or not, does not excuse you from the legal requirements to comply with the code.

Relocation
Moving equipment from one location to another depends on the distance it is moved and the jurisdiction. Requirements may differ according to whether equipment is moved within a building, from one building to another or across state lines. If a production line goes from L shaped to U shaped, or if a piece of equipment is turned or its position is changed, then it may need new conduit run to it, Pauley said. But the machine probably has not substantially changed in that case. Most jurisdictions put that under the maintenance category.

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

With equipment crossing state lines or moving several feet across the plant floor as extremes, scenarios that fall within this continuum will be left to the discretion of the inspectors. Some of these decisions will still be made locally, Pauley said. We have the NEC for the rules, but how the inspection is done has not been standardized.

Maintenance
If you perform maintenance on an industrial control panel, you may affect its SCCR, which would cause it to no longer comply with UL 508A. We encourage facilities to make sure they keep up with the modifications they do, said Pauley, because that could change the SCCR. You may have a control panel that has been in your plant for five years with a 5 kA SCCR and 22 kA available. You may say, it has been there for five years, and we havent had any problems. Its only because youve been fortunate enough not to have a short circuit. Electricity is a great thing. I can underrate and misssize everything. And as long as I never load the system, no one ever knows. But when its finally called upon to do its job, then things cut loose, and then you really know it.

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However, not every state has adopted the 2005 NEC. As of press time, 26 states have adopted the 2005 Code, as have a number of local jurisdictions where the states dont adopt. I think companies and inspectors are looking for the same thing they want it to be safe, they want it to be compliant and they want to make sure theyve done it the right way, Pauley said.

But if equipment is moved from one state to another, even though it is within the same company, most inspectors will view that as new equipment coming in. You are adding to the facility just as if you added onto your home by putting in new wiring, and therefore a permit would be required, Pauley said.

Not every maintenance task performed on industrial control panels warrants another inspection. If a component is changed in any power distribution path, SCCR may be affected. Control circuits are exempt. If you replace a component with the same part number from the same manufacturer, the SCCR is not affected. People are viewing SCCR like short circuit is something new, Pauley said.

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Its always been there, but now that there is more attention called to it, suddenly by pulling out a motor starter from XYZ and putting in the same size starter from ABC, you may have changed the SCCR of that panel from 22 kA to 5 kA. You have to know what youre replacing, what youre replacing it with and if it maintains the rating you would have had. From a UL listing aspect, if you replace it with something thats marked on the diagram, then the listing is still ok. But if you replace it with something thats not on there, then UL cant tell you what that does to the listing because they havent evaluated it. In cases where you need to replace an obsolete component, it may be difficult to determine what your selected replacement does to the rating. Some third-party inspection companies offer field evaluation services that will examine your modifications, evaluate their impact and determine suitability. Sometimes its necessary to contact the manufacturer of the intended replacement component to ask for further test data or information that could be useful in determining the SCCR. Some manufacturers are working with UL to compile comprehensive databases that list tested combinations of components. This option can save time and money because only a field inspection would be required. This inspection is typically to witness the label being changed to recognize the rating of the new component. Although there is cost associated with the inspection, it is still less expensive than a field evaluation. Tested device combinations have a UL record number, which is used as a reference when determining SCCR, according to Lottmann. However, the information is good for that combination only. Once the component or combination is installed into the control panel as part of an upgrade, for example, it does not take upstream circuits into consideration. There may be two other existing branch circuits that still have only a 10 kA rating, which means that the panel is only good for 10 kA, Pauley said. Weve given them a 42 kA combination (for example). The objective of doing the database is that anyone an inspector, a facilities engineer would be able to access the database and determine the rating when using this component with that circuit breaker. But the UL number is primarily going to mean something only to the person building the control panel. I can give you a UL number for a circuit breaker. But if I install that circuit breaker in a panel with other components, all I have is a listed circuit breaker. It tells me nothing about whether I have a listed assembly that it went into. Whereas the UL number is of more value to the panel builder, the databases will be of value for inspectors and end users. The database plays an important role when doing a field evaluation because the nationally recognized testing laboratory doing the evaluation can use the listed combination in relation to all the applicable circuits in the control panel, which expedites the field evaluation. As inspectors concentrate on industrial control panel SCCR compliance, plant engineers and managers should become more familiar with how UL 508A and the 2005 NEC work together, and how they affect equipment specification, procurement, installation and maintenance at your facilities.

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

The Bottom Line...

Part of UL 508A requires short circuit current rating to be marked on industrial control panels. When specifying equipment, consider procuring the control panel from a listed supplier with third-party certification to all applicable standards including UL 508A. If you perform maintenance on an industrial control panel, you may affect its SCCR, which would cause it to no longer comply with UL 508A.

For More Info

Refer to UL 508A, Supplement SB to determine the requirements for calculating and labeling SCCR on each control panel.

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Integrated Prototype Functions Ease Control Panel Design

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls Software Helps Control Panel Designs And The Component Selection, Prototyping, Setup, And Testing Of Control Panel Components Prior To Assembly. Such Software Also Can Help With Optimal Component Placement, Standards Compliance, And Ensure That Programming Works Upon Installation.
By Mark T. Hoske, Content Manager, Control Engineering 06/18/2010 component selection, optimal placement and standards compliance. It also ensures programming works after installation. Such built-in prototype functionality, sometimes not even referred to as prototyping by control vendors, speeds time to market for control panel builders, system integrators, and original equipment manufacturers. Software can improve quality, reduce risk, ease integration, streamline commissioning, and better manage product lifecycles, compared to paperbased (or lost) project documentation. Prototype functionality allows easier upgrades, lowering costs over the lifecycle of the control cabinet or panel and for use of connected components beyond the control panel. Multiple entrants in Control Engineerings Control Panel Design Contest in in the past two years agree about the value of such software tools. While software cannot do everything, and no software package provides all of the following functionality, control panel designers may use software for: Electrical design; 3D prototyping for component selection and layout; Control panel compliance regulations, such as UL 508A, the Standard of Safety for Industrial Control Panels, ANSI/UL 347, High Voltage Industrial Control Equipment, and ANSI/UL 508C, Power Conversion Equipment, among other standards.) Control software design, analysis and testing, and integration with human-machine interface and networks; and 3D motion simulations for motion-related devices connected to the panel. In general, software is deeper in functionality than just a few years ago. Its also quicker to learn, easier to use, modular (allowing users to buy want is needed), and may be available as a software as a service (SaaS).

during design, more economically, and quickly than during assembly. On the hardware side, many control component manufacturers offer advice, examples, videos, and starter kits to help with initial designs. If its the first design of many, they may even offer incentives. Users should refer to various vendors for details. For more about various prototyping, software tools, and control panel design, also see: www.abb.us/product/us/9AAC100741. aspx?country=US www.controleng.com/ controlpanelcontest http://ulstandardsinfonet.ul.com http://usa.autodesk.com

During design, intelligent software cautions the user about incompatibilities during design. This allows a smoother prototyping in software and hardware, and in the final assembly. Product images and dimensions can be imported from libraries of components. Software can suggest placeholders, links, and missing components. Bills of material (BOM), incorporating and checking for compatibilities from multiple manufacturers, may be automatically generated. Built-in guides and wizards automate many steps, transferring I/O (input/ output) tags from design to runtime software, saving time and eliminating a source for errors. Imported knowledge from prior projects, other areas of an organization, and other software can be incorporated, and designs can be collaborative over multiple locations, as needed. Digital prototyping software can run diagnostics prior to assembly, ensuring challenges are addressed

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Design, setup and testing of control panel components inside software prior to assembly enable appropriate

95% 80

% of respondents

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25% Pre-owned Screwiess Insultation displacement Other 22% 47%

60

40

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Trends In Terminal Blocks

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design
% of respondents voting very important

Scrow

2%

Source: Control Engineering Magazines 2002 Terminal Block Product Focus

Ease of Installation

31% Wide variety of special block

Availability

20

Speciffications

Same supplier as PLC products used

Staff 03/01/2002

40

36%

Same supplier as DIN-rail products used

Cost

12%

Insultation displacement

Contestants will be judged on originality and aptness of thought. Neatness counts! These may sound like rules for an essay contest but they also Variations on a Theme apply to control system wiring. In no 40 38% other area of industrial endeavor does Trends in having the right devices assembled the right way make the difference 30 Terminal Blocks between a well-executed and maintainable system and a confusing mess. Five tips20for designing According to Erich Langhorst, project 16% 14% manager at Bay Area Instrument & control panels Electric (Benicia, Calif.)8% rail-mounted DIN 9% 10 terminal blocks came along at the right 7% 6% White Paper: time to become 1% almost the defacto 2% 0 standard for panel building. DIN-rail The secret ingredients Speciallity block type Source: Control Engineering Magazines 2002 Terminal Block Product Focus blocks save space and are extremely in lean electric controls flexible. They are cheaper, quicker to mount, and offer a wide choice functions. Once DIN-rail blocks became widely available, the choice to use them vs. terminal strips and discrete components became a foregone conclusion for many control panel builders, Mr. Langhorst adds, I counted myself Sponsored by among them.
% of respondents
Signal conditioning Power supply Surge suppressor Circut breaker Input block Resistor Relay Fuss Other

8%

Source: Control Engineering Magazines 2002 Terminal Block Product Focus

In its most recent examination of terminal block technology, Control Engineering polled 10,000 readers by email, which yielded 531 replies or a response rate of over 5%. CEs readers rated availability, ease of installation, and cost in that order at the top of product selection criteria. For a product that may be required in the hundreds, thousands, and often tens of thousands in an industrial control system, this response is not unexpected. However, it is the next two responses from those voting most important on these criteria that tell the tale.

Application assistance

Contestants Will Be Judged On Originality And Aptness Of Thought. Neatness Counts!

Product Selection Criteria

80 73% 81% 48%

What Users Need Is Important

Specifications and availability of a wide variety of special blocks is what allows users to apply originality and aptness of thought to the required system wiring. Thirty-six and 31% of those answering this question, respectively, saw these criteria as very important. And if the right amount and type(s) of terminal blocks are available at the right price, wiring neatness goes along for the ride. The specialty blocks mentioned in the survey covered a wide variety of functions. Part the reasoning for including other required electrical/ electronic functions in the blocks goes back to good design practice. Consolidation not only saves valuable plant real estatesmaller and fewer components mean smaller enclosures-but also eliminates the need for separately wired components, saving both labor and material. Placing additional required electrical
Current Termination Methods
100 95%

60

components in the blocks when possible also puts them in a central location, a definite advantage in system troubleshooting. According to Larry Freeland, product manager, terminal blocks at Phoenix Contact (Harrisburg, Pa.) specialty blocks do not represent the majority in a terminal block population in an average control system. In the case of fuse blocks, they exist roughly in a ratio of 1/7 with standard feed-through ones, Mr. Freeland says. In the case of other specialty blocks adding extra functionality can be application specific. These blocks can be much more expensive than the standard items, depending on the specifications required, Mr. Freeland adds. Specialty blocks can take replace much larger components, allowing panel space requirements to shrink drastically. These devices are functional replacements for many traditional control components, such as power supplies, signal conditioning modules, control relays, etc. These commercially available terminal block-style devices can also eliminate a significant amount of wiring, wire marking, and terminations on a per panel basis. When compared with a similar survey run a year earlier by CE, preferred termination method ranking remained the same with gains made in all technologies. Although both screwless (spring-type) and insulation displacement contact (IDC) technology have

17%

80

% of respondents

60

47%

40 25% Pre-owned Screwiess 20 Scrow

Source: Control Engineering Magazines 2002 Terminal Block Product Focus

Other

22%

2%

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has remained the same, the use of both screwless and IDC blocks have made gains in the field. Jim Bachle, electrical products manager at Wago (Germantown, Wis.), feels that the slower acceptance of newer termination technologies has suffered because panel building often does not get the engineering attention that other control subsystems do.
Surge suppressor 8% Other

40

Variations on a Theme
38%

ONLINE
For more Terminal Block products, visit www.controleng.com/freeinfo

30

% of respondents

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

20 16% 10 Relay 14% Circut breaker 9% Input block

Signal conditioning

Power supply

Fuss

7%

6%

2%

1%

Source: Control Engineering Magazines 2002 Terminal Block Product Focus

Speciallity block type

% of respondents

been around in practical form for at least 25 years, conventional screw-type blocks remain the most used by a wide margin over these technologies. In this survey, 95% of respondents said they use screw-type termination compared to 47% for screwless and a distant 22% for insulation displacement.

This compares to 77% for screwtype termination, 15% for screwless technology, and 4% for IDC type in the previous year. In both surveys, actual use values add up to more than 100% because of the multiple responses given. It is important to note that even though the ranking of the technologies

Terminal blocks are a small percentage of the cost of an overall system and, as such, are not always fully investigated during the design process. Cost of maintenance and production downtime also figure into the life-cycle cost of terminal blocks. It is no longer acceptable to ignore technology advances is this area of the overall control system, Mr. Bachle comments.

Resistor

Curre
100

80

60

END

40

20

Source: Con 2002 Termin

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very important
80

Product Selection Criteria

73% 81% ance 48% d

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Five Tips For Designing Control Panels

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls Dear Control Engineering: When Planning Control Panels, What Are Key Design Considerations?
By Mark T. Hoske, Content Manager, Control Engineering 02/13/2010

Enhance quality, enable predictive maintenance, increase throughput, and meet enterprise and supply chain goals by integrating appropriate sensors, logic devices, actuators, automation software, humanmachine interface, I/O modules, industrial Ethernet and other rugged network protocols, wired or wireless. These are tips from the 2009 series of Control Engineering tutorial videos on control panel design. See www.controleng.com/video for additional details to help with your next project. Have some good ideas and techniques to share? Learn how to submit your 2010 tutorial video on panel design at www. controleng.com/controlpanelcontest. Posted by Ask Control Engineering on February 13, 2010

Dear Control Engineering: When planning control panels, what are key design considerations?

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Here are five points to keep in mind as you begin: Consider the purpose and goals of the machine that the control panel will serve. How can the next-generation design further those goals? Use hardware and software components and industry standards to speed control panel design, assembly, test, and installation, maximize reuse of intellectual property, and ensure compliance with electric codes and safety requirements. Design with attention to ergonomics for operator safety and comfort, machine access for maintenance and repair, and cleaning, and security needs. Distribute components beyond the enclosure or panel as needed to enhance performance and lower wiring costs.

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The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls Building with lean processes significantly increasing value for themselves and customers. isnt enough; theres big savings in the way the Sources of waste in electric control is designed. panel design
Lean Manufacturing has been adopted by more manufacturers as a source of increased competitiveness than any other improvement methodology, according to The MPI Group, which maintains an extensive database of manufacturing operating data. Its 2010/2011 Manufacturing Study indicates that 69 percent of U.S. manufacturers are using Lean principles at some level to improve operating performance. Manufacturers of electrical equipment and machinery are no exception. In fact, according to The MPI Groups Next Generation Manufacturing Study, no industry has embraced process improvement more aggressively than producers of electrical equipment and components. The ultimate goal of Lean Manufacturing is to identify and eliminate waste wherever it exists. In manufacturing electrical control panels, companies are applying such Lean disciplines as cellular manufacturing, 5S organization and kanban-based inventory replenishment. But for many manufacturers, the very design of these panels represents a new frontier in Lean an opportunity to identify and eliminate waste while Electric control panels are complicated systems that must perform a range of mission-critical tasks over a long period of time at the highest level of reliability. Hence, the standard for such panels has been to build them tough and strong. Often, this is interpreted to mean specification of oversized components, hand-wired and painstakingly tested to stringent standards. But muda the material and process waste that Lean Manufacturing seeks to eliminate is inherent in such an approach. When building an electric panel, muda expresses itself in essentially three forms: cost, time and physical space. Combined, the wastes that are incorporated in the design of many control panels can add significant expense perhaps as much as 20 to 30 percent of the panels total cost, experts say. If these are identified and systematically eliminated, the result can be a control panel that offers more functionality while costs significantly less to build and own. Here are six potential sources of waste in electric control panels as they have typically been designed: Over-specification/Selection of standards: Utilizing unnecessarily robust components increases cost and requires additional space, and may not provide any quantifiable advantage in terms of durability or performance that the end-user is willing to pay for. Equipment built in the United States has historically been designed to NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association) standards, notes Ken Grimes, vice president at Carotek Inc., a North Carolina-based provider of electrical integration services. That makes it big and, Grimes believes, often overbuilt. As manufacturers focus on saving space and money, they are increasingly adopting the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) standards used predominantly in Europe. IEC-based panels are fundamentally different, Grimes says. Physically they are much smaller and they arent as hardy. When they fail, end users often elect not to repair them, but replace them. Since these units are so much less expensive to build, and save so much space, the savings can approach 30% even factoring in a potentially shorter working life. Further, more frequent replacement provides an ongoing benefit from advances in technology. This is a typically European view of capital equipment, and may explain why the IEC standards are so different from NEMAs. Use of non-standardized components: Use of parts that are not standardized across multiple product designs increases inventory management costs and complexity. It can lead to production and shipping delays, and increased costs due to expediting, forfeit of economies of scale, and reduced customer loyalty. Repetitive manual tasks: Timeconsuming work such drilling and tapping flash pans, and hand-wiring connections represent the largest share of labor that goes into fabricating an electric panel. Any reduction in time spent on such tasks serves to reduce cost without affecting value the very definition of success in Lean Manufacturing. Testing: According to Mike Muradian, Product Marketing Specialist for Connection Products at ABB, testing can represent 15 to 20 percent of the cost of an electric panel. Others have suggested the cost can be as high as 50 percent. While its unimaginable to ship any kind of electrical control panel without thorough testing, in Lean Manufacturing the need for testing can be considered a failure. An objective in Lean is to develop manufacturing processes that eliminate defects through precision and repeatability. If these processes work, the theory says, there is no need to test. While manufacturers arent likely to draw such a hard line, to recognize testing as a non-value-added activity and thus

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seek to minimize it provides meaningful savings. Size: A larger panel simply contains more materials components, wire and the enclosure itself. Further, the more space a panel occupies, the greater a burden is it likely to be for the end user. But Chas Harris, Director of Product Management for DIN Rail Products and Enclosures at ABB, adds that this very effort provides additional benefits to the end-user. A Lean electric control panel will not only be less expensive to produce, but it will be less costly to operate in terms of reliability, reparability, flexibility and safety. Manufacturers may struggle to sell this value to their customers, but by embracing Lean design in electric panels, they can succeed at reducing the customers first-cost while improving machine performance and lifecycle costs attributes that enhance product differentiation and customer loyalty. connections. Using such components reduces manufacturing time by eliminating the need to mount and wire separate devices. It also brings the devices closer together, using less space. Bus distribution systems: Traditional manufacturing methods for electric control panels require each device to be mounted separately and then wired. This means repetitive drilling and tapping of back-pans, individual mounting of each device, and stripping and connecting wires a manual process that must then be tested. Using modular bus bar technology, devices can be mounted like Lego: by simply snapping them into bus bar sockets no wiring, no stripping, no drilling or tapping, Latham says. Using such technology doesnt require downstream reengineering, offers Harris. On the load side of the breaker, you can still have wiring going to the device thats being protected. But youve eliminated half the amount of wiring you need to do in a panel, he says. Such bus bars are typically available with either UL or IEC compliance, and provide the additional benefit of a cleaner and more uniform panel that is easier to repair or modify, Harris notes. You dont have to go in and unwire a bunch of stuff to get the breaker off the bus tray. Its a snap-on solution. Hillermann acknowledges that individual components utilizing a bus bar system are typically more expensive than those that are individually mounted and wired. Your component cost will increase when you design this way, says Hillermann. But when you factor in the labor savings, its not unusual to see savings of 5 to 10 percent in manufacturing cost with this technology. If youre building multiple panels, throughput will increase because youve shortened your cycle time. And all of the connections are already tested before delivery. Advanced terminal blocks: The traditional screw clamp terminal block takes about 15 seconds per wired connection, says Nazim Matmati, Product Manager - Connection Products & EPR at ABB. Most of that time is dedicated to stripping and preparing the wire, a process that may be repeated several hundred times in a complex electrical panel. The more recent generation of spring-clamp terminal blocks can improve cycle time by about a third, Matmati says. But the most timeconsuming part of the process stripping and preparing the wire is unchanged. IDC (Insulation Displacement Connection) clamps eliminate the need for stripping altogether, and some IDC systems utilize a tool that affirms a solid connection before the tool can be released reducing testing and cutting cycle time 80 percent compared to screw-clamp terminal blocks to about 3 seconds, says Matmati. Pre-wire cabling systems: Where PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) are involved, wiring is typically pointto-point, says Muradian. You strip the wire, terminate it at the PLC, run the other end through the wire duct and connect it to the field wire. And you do

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

Lack of flexibility: Electric control panels typically are not designed to evolve. But as they are used over time, end users routinely seek to modify or increase their utility to meet new strategies, accommodate emerging equipment technologies or simply prolong their life. To design and fabricate a panel in a way that makes it easier to repair and modify over time provides increased value.

A hard sell-through
There is a problem: End-users dont think in terms of value when considering electric control panels. In fact, they often dont consider panels at all. For end-users, control panels tend to be a necessary component of a larger piece of equipment. They are considered a commodity; the less money spent the better, says Egon Hillermann, Product Manager at ABB for Proline and Pro-M Series miniature circuit breakers, and Smissline electrical protective devices. The value of an electric panel does not generally lend itself to lifecycle cost analysis, Hillermann says. Manufacturers worry about the first cost; their customers demand that of them. The value of Lean really accrues to the OEM who can use it to drive out the most cost from the process of providing electric panels.

Building a leaner panel

So what are the components of a Lean electric control panel? They are technologies that cut manufacturing time, reduce their physical size, and decrease the need for time-consuming testing. They achieve this by reducing the amount of wiring that must be done, increasing the speed of whatever writing remains, shrinking the size of components, reducing the number of components, and enhancing the panels capabilities. Here are several technologies that apply. Combining control devices: Typically, control panel motor starters are built with three devices: a main breaker, an overload and a contactor, offers Dean Latham, Control Panel Segment Manager at ABB. But modular components have been designed that allow the three devices to be combined into a single manual motor protector unit that plugs together through standardized

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this 64 times, Muradian says. But a pre-wire cabling system is a pre-tested wire harness with connectors on both ends not unlike the serial cables used to connect 1990s-era printers to personal computers. It eliminates pointto-point wiring for a 98 percent reduction in cycle time during installation. Product Marketing Specialist for soft starters and enclosed products with Low Voltage Products & Services at ABB. Smaller, more versatile contactors: Advances in contactors have generally focused on improving the operation of their magnetic coils reducing the number of coils needed. This allows smaller contactor units to handle a wider voltage range, Griffin says. That helps to reduce panel size. It also means that instead of ordering an inventory of contactors with different numbers of coils, manufacturers can order one size to use across a range of applications. It reduces inventory. Electronic overloads and circuit breakers: There are two types of overload devices thermal and electronic. Thermal overloads rely on a heating element to detect the overload condition, and trip when the element reaches a set temperature. Electronic overloads do the same job, but add other valuable features. They can monitor three-phase power lines to check for phase loss and jam conditions. Some have communications capabilities for reporting data to modbus, Ethernet or other device networks allowing improved diagnostics and processing from remote locations. Further, some electronic overloads are capable of anticipating the overload condition and shutting down the process before a fault occurs reducing trouble-shooting time and potentially shortening unscheduled downtime. While such technology does not reduce the cost to manufacture a control panel, it provides a meaningful improvement in management of equipment that adds end-user value, Griffin says. Electronic circuit breakers, too, have become smaller, with added capabilities that improve performance and process visibility. For example, some single-pole miniature circuit breakers are designed to be used in 1-, 2 or 3-phase applications without rewiring increasing end-user flexibility and reducing inventory requirements for the OEM. Some breakers also provide a dual-trip mechanism that can distinguish between a short-circuit and an overload. Calculation of SCCR: Under UL-508A of the National Electric Code, every electric control panel must have an assigned SCCR (Short Circuit Current Rating). The SCCR represents the rating of the entire assembly which is not the same as the SCCR of the main overcurrent protective device. The most common way to calculate the SCCR, according to Wes Evans, Manager of Training and Channel Development with ABBs Low Voltage Products & Services, is the weakest link method. You look at the rating of each component and go with the lowest short circuit current rating among them, he says. While this method is fast, easy and well accepted, its also wasteful. It encourages manufacturers to install oversized components to achieve an acceptable SCCR. A second method is based on the let-through energy of the main protective device in the assembly. In a short-circuit event, whatever amount of energy passes through the fuse or breaker before the contacts open is the let-through energy. The smaller the letthrough energy, the better the product has performed, Evans says. If the let-through energy is less than the lowest short circuit current rating of any other component in the panel, then its acceptable to use the SCCR for the main protective device as the SCCR for the entire panel. This yields a higher SCCR than the weak-link method but it is still only an implied rating rather than a direct measurement of how the whole assembly performs, Evans says. Thats why the leanest method for establishing SCCR of a control panel is combination testing in which a completed panel is laboratory tested. Its more costly and time-consuming than calculating SCCR with the other methods. But its particularly costeffective for a panel that is going to be mass-produced. When youre combination testing, then you dont reflexively need to plug in oversized components as you do in the other two methods, Evans offers. You can design the panel with the smallest components that will do the job, which saves money and space. The more panels you plan to build, the larger the saving will be. The Lean value of combination testing, Evans says, is that it will deliver the highest rating relative to the panels cost and size.

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

The advantage extends beyond the OEM and accrues to the end users. To do an upgrade in the control panel with this kind of system is just a matter of unplugging the cable, replacing the module and plugging it back in, Muradian says. Smaller enclosures: There is nothing exciting about the enclosure of an electric control panel. But a lot of times, Harris emphasizes, the enclosure is the single most expensive item in the panel. If you can reduce the size of the panel, you can reduce the cost and thats going to drop right to the bottom line. Further, he adds, a smaller enclosure is always easier to accommodate in the manufacturing environment. When you use all of the technologies that are available to reduce wiring, reduce individual device mounting and bring the devices closer together, weve often seen a reduction in panel size by 20 percent, Harris says. Simplified component mounting: Every component in an electric control panel needs to be mounted a process that requires drilling to templates, then tapping the holes and completing the mount. When modular components are used only the bus bar needs to be mounted, with the other devices snapping into place, offers Brian Griffin,

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Summary
Experts agree that many electric panels delivered today utilize designs that havent been updated recently enough to take advantage of time- and cost-saving advances in component technologies. As companies utilize Lean Manufacturing to increase speed and flexibility, reduce cost and improve overall competitiveness, they must look beyond their manufacturing processes. They may also find opportunity to improve by reconsidering the very design of the products being manufactured. By updating product components while adhering to Lean principles, companies that build electric control panels have the opportunity to reduce the number of components that they use decreasing panel size and simplifying inventory management. Builders also can achieve dramatic cycle time reductions and labor savings by reducing wiring and other mundane tasks, with the result being a panel that costs less to build. This reduction in waste provides additional value to the end-user customer in the form of flexibility, reparability and improved performance.

Sponsor Profile Code changes affect the plant floor Integrated prototype functions ease control panel design Trends in Terminal Blocks Five tips for designing control panels White Paper: The secret ingredients in lean electric controls

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