Rubberlite, a West Virginia-based materials manufacturer, custom engineers and produces medium-density polyurethane foams in a wide variety of specifications for over 1,600 customers globally for aviation, medical, apparel, furniture applications, and more. The company’s key to growth and success is exceeding customer expectations, and developing innovative products and processes to meet emerging customer requirements.
To achieve their missions of growth through innovation, Rubberlite launched a Supervisory Control Systems Project to transform their infrastructure. The team selected Stratus Edge Computing to provide a solution to simplify and consolidate IT infrastructure, standardise data collection, and ensure continuous available of applications and reliability of data.
By improving data reliability and automation backed by Stratus Edge Computing, Rubberlite drove significant improvement in efficiency and product quality that translated to business growth and customer satisfaction. The team reduced non-sellable material by 80% while increasing sales and production by 25%. Most dramatically, they have experience zero downtime since implementing Stratus in 2016.
“I was impressed with the scalability that Stratus was able to offer us when considering investment in licenses and configuration, labour, maintenance and other costs.”
Jessica Spurlock,
Process Automation Engineer,
Rubberlite
Developing Innovative Processes to Become a World Class Organisation
Rubberlite wanted to transform their operations to improve reliability and eliminate data loss that was impacting manufacturing and increasing labour resources. Additionally, they faced the high costs of multiple software licesnses and maintaining a number of IT systems.
The company identified the need to deploy fault tolerant computing to consolidate existing legacy systems as a critical step in aligning Rubberlite’s people, processes and technology to achieve automated process controls, data integration, and a higher level of sophistication and operating discipline.
Islands of Automation Prevented Visibility on Equipment Performance
Like many manufacturers, Rubberlite lacked integration between standalone systems on the plant floor, creating siloed information islands, which prevented them from understanding the impact of equipment performance on profit or product quality.
On top of this, data was only logged during production runs, not during idle times, creating a large gap in troubleshooting abilities. Data exports were cumbersome, taking nearly an hour to generate one report. With 10-12 reports a week, this additional work accounted for one-quarter of an engineer’s time.
The company also looked to digitalise antiquated paper-based processes. For nearly 20 years, production data was stored in binders of run sheets that required operators to write actual specs and targets while making products. In the polyurethanes department, the average employee tenure was close to 20 years, leading to extensive accumulated knowledge for each individual without standardisation across the plant. The products consequently had variable repeatability because tasks were not performed in the same manner, which led to quality control and workforce development challenges.
Rubberlite decided to launch the Supervisory Control Systems Project to directly address these challenges and make strides towards increased growth and innovation.
Edge Computing the Foundation for Digital Transformation of Existing Work Processes
The polyurethanes manufacturing department was chosen as the beta site for implementation of the Supervisory Control System Project with a Stratus Edge Computing platform as the backbone.
Rubberlite selected the Stratus ftServer for its turnkey combination of hardware, software, and continuous monitoring services. The platform’s “lock step,” fault tolerance at the hardware level ensured that, in the event of a malfunction, the system continued operation without downtime or data loss. Additionally, the system provides proactive health monitoring to identify potential issues before they occur, and hot swappable components for servicing while in operation without incurring any planned downtime.
Stratus ftServer further allowed the Rubberlite team to use virtualisation to run multiple software applications concurrently, eliminating the need to purchase multiple hardware, software, and licenses which reduced system admin costs.
Working with Stratus distributor, InSource Solutions, Rubberlite configured ftServer to consolidate software workloads backed by fault tolerance. The result was a quickly modernised infrastructure optimised for their new control architecture at a fraction of the cost and complexity of prior or alternative computing solutions. Stratus’ simple way of enabling fault tolerance with one physical system reduced the total investment (labor and capital) by 50% as compared to more complex methods.
Reliability of Stratus ftServer and AVEVA System Platform
For its SCADA system, Rubberlite employed AVEVA System Platform and associated manufacturing software for control, data collection, and sharing. As a long-standing Stratus technology partner, AVEVA solutions are well characterised to run on Stratus platforms and provide a combined solution optimised for OT environments.
New and existing PLCs and instrumentation interface directly with the AVEVA System Platform running on Stratus ftServer, including applying the appropriate networking requirements, generating documentation, testing and commissioning.
AVEVA System Platform Galaxy Configuration and Implementation utilise InTouch and Historian for operator interface and data collection. AVEVA’s thin manager, also running on ftServer, allows the installation and configuration of thin clients using Stratus redundancy.
With this foundation in place, Rubberlite was well positioned to deploy more sophisticated automated controls and process improvements, and continue to leverage AVEVA System Platform’s full capabilities. The software’s template-based technology in a centralised deployment eliminated the costs and risks of technology implementation, and reduced engineering labor costs to enable long-term project sustainability.
“We have not had a single downtime event since the Stratus ftServer has been running in March 2016.”
Jessica Spurlock,
Process Automation Engineer,
Rubberlite
Data Reliability and Automation Translate to Product Quality and Customer Satisfaction
Instead of a rip and replace of foundational technology, Rubberlite was able to modernise existing technology and creatively utilise current investments to their greatest potential. By automating previously manual tasks, they gained enhanced quality control while improving critical business KPIs such as:
- 80% reduction of off-grade material within five years of implementation
- 25% increase in sales and several new product offerings introduced to the market, including two new product lines
Simple, Protected, and Autonomous Operations with Stratus
Through the success of the Supervisory Control Systems Project, the Rubberlite team is now freed to optimise performance and results, rather than focusing on maintenance tasks and data quality. Rubberlite is also able to develop standards and processes that combine employees’ years of valuable knowledge with modernised technology from Stratus. Specifically, some of the processes improved include:
- A central database to generate recipes and process parameters for every grade of foam produced which digitised Rubberlite’s paper-based processes.
- An automated recipe management system that greatly improved efficiency in startups and change overs, and reduced errors in operator entry.
- A historian-linked interface for engineers to access all process data according to associated fields. This project turned the painstaking process of generating reports into a simple task, saving hours of time overall.
- A web-based visual scheduling display for plant-wide production and maintenance activities. This user-friendly graphical user interface allowed for easy editing of scheduling information in real time, improving communication between management, engineering, operations, and maintenance.
While Rubberlite had already achieved decades of success, they were not satisfied with the status quo – they had a drive to continually innovate and improve. By partnering with Stratus, Rubberlite was able to fully leverage and maximise the benefits of Edge Computing to deliver simple, protected, and autonomous capabilities to their manufacturing operations.
“Going with Stratus was a no-brainer” concludes Jessica.
For more information, please visit www.stratus.com or follow on Twitter @StratusAlwaysOn.
