Schneider Electric has developed its international technological partnership with the DeLonghi Group through a first project carried out in Romania – a project to modernize and secure the industrial electrical installations in the Italian company’s factories.
Schneider Electric’s collaboration in Romania with DeLonghi marked an important evolution in concept and level of requirement in securing networks since the design stage, the teams of the two companies using the context of increasing operational performance in the Jucu factory, Cluj County, as an opportunity to modernize, reduce operating costs, increase network reliability, in parallel with simplifying operation and increasing their protection and control level.
In Romania, DeLonghi Group owns 3 production units of household appliances and must easily and robustly adapt its production to the extremely varied export requirements coming from customers around the world. The Jucu plant is the first unit opened by DeLonghi Group in Romania, specialized in the manufacture of automatic coffee espresso machines. Today, it is the “front line” of product development and manufacturing in this field.
In order to develop and, above all, make this competitive opening more flexible, DeLonghi has prepared a complex “roadmap” to increase the performance of the manufacturing process and its industrial base in Romania. Some of the projects included in this plan are co-financed by European funds.
“For our end customer, a perfetto coffee is a push of a button. Simple, with a DeLonghi automatic espresso machine,” says Carmen Petcu, General Manager Romania, DeLonghi Group. “But behind this gesture there are many beautiful and dedicated people, many hours of engineering, quality, work and passion, vision and responsibility.”
Within this multi-year plan – the robustness and continuity of operation, the degree of protection and control of the electrical installations could not be overlooked – their contribution to optimizing the factory’s utility consumption (electricity, water, thermal energy) being significant. In order to meet expectations in terms of implementation time and quality, the projects were launched together with trusted partners, whose expertise and technological performance have been tested and demonstrated in repeated situations.
The project team was naturally formed – Schneider Electric Romania, Imsat Service Cluj and Electra Instal Turda. The proposed solution, with a high degree of customization and adapted to the client’s future production needs, included a complete solution – electrical panels, temperature monitoring systems in panels, over 250 electricity, water and thermal energy meters for the production lines; the 250 meters work integrated with the Power Monitoring Expert monitoring solution developed by Schneider Electric, which allows real-time visualization of consumption, detects anomalies and allows optimization of utility costs.
Schneider Electric’s Building Management System solution, Ecostruxure Building Operation – implemented by partner Thermo Control Sfântu Gheorghe – controls heating/cooling, lighting, ventilation installations, ensuring continuous monitoring of the operating status of critical equipment.
“We found in the DeLonghi Romania team a demanding partner but also deeply concerned about long-term safety and sustainability, through innovative solutions,” said Lucian Enaru, Country Manager Schneider Electric Romania, Moldova and Armenia. “The project carried out at the Jucu factory placed particular emphasis on occupational safety and long-term operational safety and will allow DeLonghi to monitor and manage its costs more easily. Through this project, we prepared them to be flexible and competitive in a global economic context in which operational efficiency still depends heavily on energy performance.”
The partnership marked an important step with this project, the two companies continue their collaboration post-implementation through the predictive maintenance services that Schneider Electric provides to DeLonghi Romania, which ensure continuity of operations, extended equipment life, specialized technical assistance and cost predictability on critical installations.