The Group “L‘univers de l’emballage” uses elecworks to design packaging machines
The Group “L’univers de l’Emballage”, created in the early 90s from a regional SME partnership, is No. 1 in France for the distribution of products and packaging systems for the fruit and vegetable market. With over 250 employees at 22 locations in France and a turnover close to € 90 millions, the group offers a wide range of packaging machines for food or for the industrial product transportation: packaging, shrink-wrapping, folding machines, labeling lines … The site of St Sylvain d’Anjou in western France, already equipped with Trace Software software (Trace Elec Pro, 2D standalone electrical CAD tool) since 2003 has opted in 2011 for elecworks™ with 2 licenses used by the automation engineers.
As a custom-packaging specialist, the group controls the entire packaging chain, from preparation to product shipping and has a fleet of several thousand machines for which it provides after sales service. The engineering department designs and maintains specific machines or complete lines. The equipment department based at St Sylvain d’Anjou has 14 people including 4 designers, a cabler, an installer, 2 field technicians, a workshop and customer service manager and 2 automation engineers. elecworks™ licenses are used by control engineers to carry out electrical schematics, prepare bill of materials and component orders, program machines and ensure their commissioning. elecworks™- designed special machines are filling systems on blister with receipt of pre-weighed doses for container filling.
Exemple of machine designed with elecworks™: mash filling and packing machine
Since 2012, elecworks™ has replaced Trace Elec Pro. The team was seduced by its intuitiveness. “It is an easy to use and out of the box, it includes all necessary features (schematic, BOM export, archiving),” said Manuel Suteau, automation engineer. “With a network license installation, each control engineer can work from his own PC. We have two licenses (a limited 20-folio license and an unlimited one). The software is then used according to current needs to create from scratch or to update an existing project. “
The team has customized templates, terminal management and BOM. The projects revolve usually around forty folios. They do not use the cable length feature and the cable core assignment. They use internally referenced material for simplicity and quicker customer service reasons. The basis of their electrical panels is virtually identical on all their projects. They keep it and update it for new projects. If there is no integration of the tool with the internal data management system, the equipment BOM export is used to exchange with other departments.
“The most popular features are the copy-paste from one page to another and the undo/redo. What we also liked is how easy it is to install in client / server mode and its relatively efficient running, if you accept our own IT network slowness. This operating mode allows us both to use it simultaneously from our respective desks, “says Manuel Suteau. “No need to look for essential commands. A simple copy-paste or undo saves us precious minutes. On a standard project which was usually done in six hours, we sometimes save up to one hour. “
