While reading your newspaper, have you ever thought about the long way the paper in your hand has gone through? No? Producing a piece of paper requires more than 60 steps. That’s what it takes Dutch manufacturer Crown van Gelder to produce its paper in a non-stop process. They are on the job day and night, at weekends and on public holidays. Two production lines, each 150 m long, have to be observed around the clock. Luckily, they are monitored by our KVM products.
Customer
CVG
- Manufacturer and seller of high-quality paper
- Located in Velsen, the Netherlands
- over 100 years of experiences in manufacturing paper
Facts
- 220,000 tons of paper each year
- Occupies a site of 10 hectares
- Electricity from company-owned energy power plant
- 2 production lines (150 m long, 5 and 3,6 m wide)
Looking at these numbers, it’s obvious that our devices had to face a lot of work.
Challenges
Monitoring the manufacturing process requires devices that ensure the high quality CVG’s paper. Moreover, they need to be able to deal with the rough operating environment in a paper mill. Thus, the most important challenges were:
- device adapting to the rough environment and coping with electronic interferences
- lower maintenance costs
- less downtime
- intuitive system operation
- specially implemented alarm keyboards
Products
- KVM extenders to extend analogue and digital signals and use different types of cables (CATVision)
- KVM switches to operate multiple computers from one console (miniMUX)
- KM switches to get rid of the large amount of keyboards and mouses at desks (TradeSwitch)
Solution
The question that remains is how to turn this many challenges and products into a working system? Well, that’s quite easy:
1. Removing computers
First, any sensitive computer hardware was removed into a clean and air-conditioned room, which also prevents unauthorised access to the computers.
The control room is located in the middle of two paper production streets. Process operators access multiple servers that manage, adjust and monitor the production process. At the wet production part, the IT devices monitor any processes. Here, operators need to detect problems before they cause a system shut-down.
2. Bridging distances with KVM extenders
Our KVM extender system then bridged the distance between the hardware in the server room and the users. Each KVM extender system consists of a transmitter and a receiver.
Connected through CAT cable or optical fibres, a local transmitter is placed at the computer in the server rack and sends video, keyboard and mouse signals to the receiver at the controller’s desk. The simple plug-and-play KVM devices support user terminals at both ends allowing local and remote access to the connected computers. Now transmitting even multiple video channels at the same time is no longer an issue. The extenders automatically adjust any Interferences on UTP cables caused by the electronic environment . Since the devices are connected directly, the system does not require any software or additional devices for operation. Once connected and powered on, the devices are ready for use.
3. KVM switches to monitor all processes
If a controller has to monitor multiple computers or needs process monitoring as well as office or ERP applications, the use of a KVM switch comes in handy. A single switch can control between 2 and 8 computers. It saves equipment at the desk and provides controllers with a detailed overview of the system. The KVM switch enables users to access and monitor different computers simultaneously with just one set of peripherals (keyboard, monitor, mouse). Thanks to the RS232 interface our KVM extenders provide, special alarm keyboards can easily be implemented into the application.
Benefits
As mentioned above, there are many. Here are the most important advantages of applying KVM:
- Plug & play devices
- Computer operation without any latencies
- Improved product quality and higher throughput
- Real-time monitoring of system status
- User-defined thresholds alert operators of potential problems before they cause a system shut-down
After the system was installed by our sales partner Koning & Hartman, our KVM devices now monitor all process at CVG: from blending to the wet production part over drying, paste application, calendaring up to the jumper reel and finally the packaging station. And this is how KVM ensures that you can read your morning paper in its usual quality.
by: Annette Häbel
Editor, translator and blogger at Guntermann & Drunck.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
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