US Cotton

AirmaticsTM Averts Plant Shutdown In Us
An AIRMATICSTM customer is a leading US manufacturer of health and beauty cotton products in the Americas.
Having grown exponentially since it first opened its doors in 1983, the firm’s production lines and manufacturing capabilities have expanded in order to meet growing demand for its comprehensive range of cotton products.
When a significant issue with its Charlotte plant’s compressor regulation mechanism threatened to halt production and cost the firm substantial amounts of money in downtime, CMC’s AIRMATICSTM solution was used to identify the problem and enable the firm’s service provider to intervene before it was too late.
The service provider, Engineering Sales Associates (ESA), wanted to improve its offering, better understand its customer’s plant performance profile and deliver additional competitive advantage, so it decided to install AIRMATICSTM – a simple cloud-based air compressor monitoring, performance and control solution that provides real time data, analytics and insights at the push of a button. In doing so, it immediately armed the manufacturer with the ability to monitor its compressor assets 24/7.
However, it wasn’t until AIRMATICSTM identified a critical high-pressure issue that would have led to the plant’s shutdown within nine days that the technology demonstrated an ability to avert disaster.
Analysis of the plant’s pressure data made possible via AIRMATICSTM revealed a defective regulation mechanism. The compressors’ kWh output indicated that the compressors were not properly synchronized, which was creating substantial inefficiencies and generating high pressure within the system.
After recommendations from ESA, the manufacturer agreed to install the AIRMATICSTM COMMAND & CONTROL platform, which enabled ESA to build on the data provided by AIRMATICSTM by delivering additional intelligence and insights relating to the entire air compressor system and install the infrastructure required to automatically regulate and optimise the air compressor system’s performance.
As ESA was able to visually comprehend exactly what has happening via the easy-to-use platform, it was able to make the necessary adjustments without the system needing to be shut down.
AIRMATICS™ is an end-to-end solution that includes:
Brand and age agnostic monitoring devices that can monitor the performance of one or multiple air compressor assets
Monitors the health and performance of the entire compressed air system – all from one AIRCLOUD interface. Users can remotely monitor and manage a group of connected assets from anywhere onsite – even if that onsite location isn’t local to the air compressor station.
Since installing AIRMATICSTM the US manufacturer has:
“Using the data collected, it was clear that the pressure readings at each local controller were reading different pressures at the same time. This caused one machine to load when the other was actually unloading – the machines were effectively fighting each other. Now that we are controlling the system using one pressure it has leveled out and we are seeing energy savings.”
Engineering Sales Associates’ Systems and Controls Specialist