Stephen Lyczkowski, plant manager for the Lexington branch of Schneider Electric, can see how productive his plant is from his desk. Not through a huge glass window looking over the factory flow as in days of old but from three large monitors in his o.ce that provide him with a dashboard of many aspects of the plant.
“I call it the control tower,” he said. “I have a real-time display showing the performance of the plant, whether it’s in production or not. I’m tracking predictive analytics on the defect rate … I can track our overhead conveying system … I can tell if a line is going to go down, and it’s sending me alerts before the line even goes down because we’re tapped into that connectivity.”
Technicians at Schneider Electric’s Lexington plant use handheld devices to monitor the facility’s equipment and systems in real time.
In operation since 1958 and located on Mercer Road, Schneider Electric’s Lexington plant has recently transitioned to be a smart facility — and the international company’s only smart facility in the United States. The other North American smart facility for the company is in Monterey, Mexico.
Being a smart facility means that all assets within the 500,000-square-foot plant are connected. The high volume, heavily automated plant produces load centers and safety switches for electrical applications, manufacturing all of the products’ elements within the plant.
As a smart facility, all of the assets and equipment in the plant are connected, with the data pulled from them being delivered to the cloud. From there, employees can pull information from the cloud onto a tablet or laptop and see aspects of the facility’s performance as it happens.
“When you see somebody holding a tablet in front of a PLC with a barcode on it, that’s our augmented operator o.er… We can see what’s happening live within that PLC cabinet, and it’s telling us whether all of the relays or other signals are properly working,” he said. “You can see if one is tripping or even faulting out without opening the cabinet. That’s the power that we give to our maintenance technicians, our control specialists or our automation control engineers, and then within that tool, you can put in work orders or sticky notes, or pull the schematics real time … you’re not using paper anymore.”
For the company, it means greater productivity, less downtime and lower energy usage, Lyczkowski said. Two years ago, he said, prior to transitioning to smart technology, the plant was creating about 40,000 load centers per week. Now, the plant produces 55,000 per week.
That production increase also correlates with a decrease in energy consumption. Lyczkowski said the plant has seen a 7 to 8 percent reduction in energy use per year. That energy savings led to it earning the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) Advanced Lighthouse by the World Economic Forum (WEF) recognition. The Lexington site is the third Schneider Electric factory to receive the honor, the first two being the company’s Batam, Indonesia, plant in 2019, and its Vaudreuil, France, site in 2018.
The transition has also led to fewer injuries. Being able to effectively predict when equipment needs repairs allows technicians to proactively address concerns prior to break downs, he said, as well as manage repairs during downtime.
Putting an exact figure on the investment the plant has made or the return on the investment is difficult, he said.
“It’s hard for me just to tell you specifics, because every year we’re investing,” he said. “It’s not just three years… it’s been a journey over the last 10 to 15 years, really. And every year while we were investing more capital in the plant, newer equipment packages and replacing older equipment, we were using our own Schneider products, whether it’s relay components or servo drive motors. That has allowed us to adapt and be more creative with our coffers.”
The plant serves as a model not only for the rest of Schneider Electric, he said, but also for the company’s customers. Sometimes, he said, customers come into the plant to see how things operate on the plant’s floor and to get ideas as to how the same technology could be used in their own facility. The company is also working with the University of Kentucky to o.er students an opportunity to see the plant and learn how smart facilities operate.
Currently, he said, the facility is operating seven days a week, a move that has allowed him to expand his workforce from about 350 people to over 530. Giving those employees access to the smart technology has only helped the business, he said.
“You’ve got people out there with iPads, or using our iPhones, with all these tools that we’ve given them,” he said. “It’s kind of the domino effect. You give the power to the people and they’re going to start bringing things to you. We’ve given access to everybody on the floor. Now, they’re monitoring tonnage; they’re monitoring thermals or monitoring speed on things. I had a maintenance technician develop his own dashboard and he’s predicting welding failures. No one told him to go do that. He just took it on himself because he thought it was cool and he knew it would help the business in his team.”
Lyczkowski said Schneider Electric’s goal is for all of its plants to be smart plants like the one in Lexington. The plant serves as a model for what smart technology can do for manufacturing in Lexington, in Kentucky and beyond, he said.
But now that the facility has transitioned to being a smart facility, that doesn’t mean he’s about to stop innovating.
“We’re never going to stop pushing the limits. I mean, the good thing about being a smart factory here in Lexington is that we’ve stood out and we’ve done all kinds of new things. I want to take the lead to be that playground for any new technology that’s out there to help us be smarter, more effective, more efficient and continue to grow.”