e-F@ctory Alliance welcome Eplan as new member

e-F@ctory Alliance welcome Eplan as new member

Ratingen, 28th of January 2014

In parallel with Eplan joining the e-F@ctory Alliance, Mitsubishi Electric Europe have been welcomed into Eplan’s “Community of efficient engineering”. This was agreed between Maximilian Brandl, Chairman of Eplan’s board of Management, and Hartmut Pütz, President of Mitsubishi Electric’s European Factory Automation Business Group, during a meeting at the SPS IPC Drives fair 2013 in Nuremberg, Germany. The meeting confirmed the importance of the close and strategic cooperation between Eplan and Mitsubishi Electric.

Hartmut Pütz comments “We highly appreciate the close cooperation with Eplan. The Eplan Platform impressively addresses the issue of minimising engineering costs effectively. This enables us to provide our mutual customers with an additional innovative solution based on our e-F@ctory Alliance.” Maximilian Brandl agrees and adds: “We are pleased to be a member of the Mitsubishi Electric partner network. Our worldwide customers benefit from the new eCAD & PLC interface and the availability of many components on the Eplan Data Portal. We are convinced that the cooperation with Mitsubishi Electric will furthermore ease our market approach in Japan.” Following the common understanding of both partners, a close cooperation between their development departments has begun, to enable the optimal integration of the two software worlds. It is predicted that the final result will enable their mutual customers to benefit from reductions in engineering costs of more than 50%.
As their first step, the new e-F@ctory Alliance partner Eplan has worked with Mitsubishi Electric Europe to integrate machine and process design, so that machines and systems can be developed and commissioned in an even shorter amount of time than before.

Currently, machine builders and system integrators start with initial design ideas and move through preplanning and basic engineering phases to detail engineering, building, testing and commissioning. Typically the various tasks are processed in separate systems, such as graphics tools, databases and text processing tools. As the project progresses, these often need to be combined, which can be difficult and time-consuming. To address this, e-F@ctory Alliance members Mitsubishi Electric and Eplan have developed process-oriented engineering solutions that deliver comprehensive workflow solutions from the initial idea through development and on to operation.

The common solution:
Synchronization between electrical design software Eplan Electric P8, part of the Eplan Platform, and GXWorks2, Mitsubishi Electric’s configuration and programming software for its MELSEC PLC range.
The Eplan Platform can now be integrated with GXWorks2. Eplan Electric P8 builds bridges between electrical and control engineering and their documentation. “Integration with GXWorks2 demonstrates the realisation of increased project quality and data accuracy, while at the same time reducing costs and engineering time for mutual customers of Eplan and Mitsubishi Electric” comments Thomas Lantermann, Senior Business Development Manager at Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V., Factory Automation – European Business Group

The Eplan Platform is central, collating all the data from preliminary planning to detail engineering. All subsequent stages of the project can be based on this comprehensive data set. Mitsubishi Electric’s macros (libraries) and product CAD data can also be included to speed up component selection, configuration and schematic designing.
With the electrical design complete, all of the data generated within Eplan can be imported directly into GXWorks2, where system configuration and programming can be quickly and easily carried out.
Complete or partial projects can be saved in libraries for use within future applications, meaning that once a function, program or structure is written, tested and proven, it can be integrated in new systems in minutes. Thus, future designs are simplified.

With the new integrated design tools and capabilities delivered by e-F@ctory Alliance partner Eplan and Mitsubishi Electric, engineers across all disciplines and at all phases of the design process benefit from the comfortable and consistent implementation of integrated engineering.

      Further Information:

      www.e-factory-alliance.com

      eu3a.mitsubishielectric.com/fa

      www.mitsubishielectric.com