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In Wisconsin, Teel Plastics has 27 extrusion lines that produce different products at various times throughout the day. Each line requires a recipe for every product, a common scenario in custom plastics processing. These recipes include different material inputs, equipment, heating components, and other variables. Recipes can change several times in one day, and ones that haven’t been used in months can resurface when new orders come in.

All these variables caused instances where human error led to deviations in the recipes. These deviations inspired Teel to find a solution that would allow operators to control all pieces electronically and reduce errors.

Recognizing the need for connectivity, data access, and scalability, Teel Plastics worked to develop a competitive strategy that would also enable the firm to capitalize on the benefits of IoT. After evaluating several IoT offerings, they found that many solutions could address one component of their needs—such as a 911������ aspect, protocol, or standard—but not everything. Further complicating the process, many of Teel’s machines are custom built, so the firm needed a solution capable of communicating with a range of PLCs from vendors including Allen-Bradley and Siemens.

Though at first Teel considered developing an in-house solution, the company ultimately found that Kepware’s IoT Gateway for KEPServerEX provided the most seamless, reliable, and scalable way to control all essential components.

Now, a Teel Plastics line operator can send a pre-saved recipe with more than 20 parameters from a web interface to the IoT Gateway, which then distributes the instructions to the machines on the line. Teel says this has proven to be a much more efficient and effective method than the previous manual process; and by providing device connectivity to multiple PLCs, it drastically reduces risk of human error. With these new processes, Teel reduced its setup times by 30%.

“By incorporating the IoT throughout our shop floor, we’ve been able to take something that previously required memorization and 30 to 40 clicks and bring it down to a single click of a button,” states Gwynne. “Working with the IoT Gateway is seamless. We’re able to trust that as our recipes evolve, KEPServerEX will be able to take on anything and everything that we throw at it.”