NOVUM

COMPANY PROFILE

Novum is a Dublin based commercial refrigerator manufacturing company-recognised world leaders in the manufacture of deep freezers and have been leading the way in refrigeration technology for over twenty years. Exporting to markets all over the world,Novum produce a range of refigerator types.

THE SITUATION

Novum had been using chart recorders to test their refigerators through operating cycles prior to dispatch to customers. In a bid towards quality driven manufacturing practices this mechanism no longer provided the flexibility or the type of information required by test engineers and by management. The system did not provide the traceability of tests now being demanded by customers. Novum required an automated data acquisition,data logging and record collection system that would provide traceability while being easy to set up for different products.

THE SOLUTION

Measuresoft, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and specialist in real-time information systems, proposed and installed a solution based on Measuresoft’s ScadaPro product running on single Microsoft Windows NT PC. Temperature, Humidity and Pressure measurements are acquired from a Datascan distributed data acquisition network. Novum now has an automated test facility which:
  • Starts and stops tests automatically.
  • Can be flexibly reconfigured to meet a changing product line or for special test requirements.
  • Automatically produces meaningful trend information and reports.
  • Runs independent tests concurrently in each of Novum’s three test rooms.
  • Provides a batch-by-batch archieve of test results for traceability purposes.
  • Directly exports data into Microsoft Excel so that it can be manually filtered using a tool familiar to the user.
  • Is simple and intuitive for its operators to use.

BENEFITS

Our solutions offer a range of benefits.

Tests are much easier to conduct, producing more reliable and repeatable testing at a fraction of the cost of alternative methods.

It has created a distinct competitive advantage for Novum, as they are the only commercial refrigerator manufacturer to offer such trace-ability and accountability in its testing and QA.

The new types of information available has allowed Novum to look at its business in a different way and this information revolution has quickly permeated across the entire organisation.

The easy to use interface has resulted in a very rapid acceptance and use by the operators.