Even after 150 years in the business, a US based equipment maker has increased sales by 20%, and reduced time to market by introducing a Schneider Electric Magelis XBT GC HMI controller.

Savage Bros of Illinois makes candy and chocolate making equipment for retail outlet and is recognized worldwide for quality and reliability. To improve their competitiveness, they began examining how they could consolidate their machine platforms to enable simpler programming and have more diagnostic and better performance.

Every machine is different

Savage’s simplest machines melt and temper chocolate using a PLC and two temperature controllers, but the features were hard to use and the PLC wasn’t easy to program or make changes. According to Paul Sulisz, director of operations at Savage Bros Every machine was used in a different way by each customer.

Working with engineers from Schneider Electric, Savage found that using a Magelis™ XBT GC HMI controller they were able to replace two temperature controllers with the combined HMI/PLC unit, going from a huge control box to a smaller one.

“More importantly, “our machines are semi-custom. We make them to end-user specifications. The XBT GC HMI controller gives our customers more of what they’re looking for because we’re able to make custom tweaks to the program much more efficiently.” Says Paul

The XBT GC HMI controller helps OEMs design more energy-efficient and cost-effective machines that maximize performance using tested, validated, and documented architectures and application function block libraries. A tremendous time saver for Savage Bros. has been the ability to reuse application function blocks between machines and programs.

After having success with its simple machines, they began converting more complex machines over to the MachineStruxure platform. Since the higher end machines require more controls and I/O, they are using the Modicon™ M238 PLC. Both the XBT GC HMI controller and the M238 PLC are programmed with SoMachine software.

“MachineStruxure gives us the flexibility to engineer both our simple and complex machines in one environment. We don’t have to go in and out of different software packages to program the various pieces of hardware.  Now, we reuse function blocks every day. We just cut, paste, and move forward. This has reduced our programming time by 50 percent.”

Savage Bros. also is finding service and maintenance easier with SoMachine. “If there’s a program change, we can email it out or put it on a memory stick and mail it out to our customers. We don’t have to send out a service tech,” said Sulisz

The result is a sleeker design that makes them more competitive in the marketplace.

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