DER-GOM s.r.l., founded in 1967, specialises in developing and producing technical rubber compounds — natural and synthetic — for demanding sectors such as automotive, railway, defence, electrical cables, appliances and marine, with a strong R&D centre and top-level quality standards. It runs a mixing room for black compounds based on internal mixers and calenders, whose automation dated back to the early 1990s.
The challenge
Modernise the production process and improve quality and traceability, without replacing a mechanically sound plant and without losing unplanned production days:
- Dosing plant managed by a Siemens S7-300 PLC out of production for years.
- Need to track recipes, consumption and production plans and integrate them with the company ERP.
- Some components prepared with manual scales, outside the automatic dosing system.
- Tight constraint: production downtime kept to a minimum.
The new Siemens S7-1500 CPU (top) communicating with the existing S7-300 cards (bottom): a targeted revamping with contained electrical investment.
Multi Data’s work
- Step revamping of the PLC: replacement of the CPU only, from the Siemens S7-300 family to the new Siemens S7-1500 CPU, keeping the existing wiring. Limited electrical investment, brand-new software with all updated functions, and the plant already ready for a later step to replace the I/O cards.
- Integration of the manual scales — weighing platforms with barcode reader and all the necessary controls — for components not handled by automatic dosing.
- Supply of a DosareX dosing station with rotary table.
- New electrical panel for a new conveying line feeding kaolin and titanium dioxide (TiO₂) to the mixing room.
- Complete rewrite of the dosing control software, with two-way data exchange with the customer’s ERP: formulas, consumption and production plans managed and controlled from the company ERP.
The result
- CPU swap, electrical tests and customer acceptance completed in under 3 weeks, with very limited downtime.
- Contained electrical investment thanks to the targeted CPU-only upgrade, with a gradual upgrade path already in place.
- Full traceability of recipes and consumption, integrated with the ERP.
- A mechanically sound plant given a new lease of life on the automation side, at a fraction of the cost of a new plant.
- Near-instant remote support over the internet.
“In order to modernise our production process and improve the quality, efficiency and traceability of our products, we looked for an automation company able to work safely on existing plants and guarantee reliable implementation times. The experience of the technicians during commissioning and the software specific to our sector kept plant downtime to a minimum — even less than initially expected.”
— DER-GOM s.r.l.