Utilizing EPLAN
Reducing costs by saving time in the control panel housing manufacturing process

● Before utilization

When drilling holes in German RITTAL products for control panel enclosures in the past, a lot of time was spent. We first designed the outline and layout with ECAD or AutoCAD,
then created a sheet metal development drawing, then had a meeting with a sheet metal processor, adjusted the type of data, creating a dedicated drawing, etc.
During the process of promoting DX in our company, two main topics were how to reduce such wasteful design labor hours and improve work efficiency.

● After utilization

In 2020, we introduced EPLAN P8 and Pro Panel, which are integrated electric CAD programs, and we were looking for ways to make design more efficient using them.
After a warm-up period of about half a year in which we found an appropriate setup,
it became possible to automatically create a drawing of where to drill holes just by arranging various control devices on an outline drawing on EPLAN..
During the warm-up period, parts data was registered accurately at a high level. For the first time, efficient work could be done in this manufacturing process.
On the contrary, when we did not take the time to do that, we realized all over again that DX for control panels was difficult.
Within the ideology behind EPLAN, the normal manufacturing flow is all one process up to the point of working with RITTAL, so how we create and use that data is important.
As mentioned above, we are now able to make full use of EPLAN within our company.Not a traditional sheet metal processor
Rather than submitting to a traditional sheet metal processor, we can now directly submit a processing request based on EPLAN data to RITTAL Japan.became.

● Utilization results

  • ● Reduction of instruction and communication time
  • ● Guaranteed quality when drilling holes in the housing of ready-made products
    (Scratches, spattering, etc.)
  • ● Reduction of design labor hours
    (Designers take about 1/2 of their previous time: Procurement managers have reduced their time to zero)
  • ● Reduction of processing costs
  • ● Reduction of human error

By changing to processing and assembly requests based on EPLAN data from RITTAL Japan, the instruction and communication time was reduced, and quality is guaranteed when drilling holes in the housing of ready-made products (scratches, spattering, etc.).
In particular, the time required of designers and procurement managers in the sheet metal processing flow has been greatly reduced (designers take about 1/2 of their previous time and procurement managers have reduced their time to zero), which reduces design labor hours.
Things that were usually difficult to quantify have been heavily reduced.
In addition, the cost of drilling holes in RITTAL products has been reduced compared to conventional sheet metal processing.

In summary, it has become possible to improve quality by reducing human error, and costs have been reduced in multiple aspects such as monetary costs, time, labor, and risk of damage.

Supplementary Information

  • IDEC Factory Solutions is the only control panel manufacturer in Japan (as of October 1, 2021, according to RITTAL JAPAN’s research) that unifies the process from purchase of RITTAL boxes to processing using EPLAN data, and this is now the world standard. We are also one of the few control panel manufacturers in Japan that can cooperate with EPLAN / RITTAL and then make the best use of the system created with them.