May 15, 2024 • 13 mins
In this episode, Terry Busch dives deeper into Power/mation's product offerings including sensing and inspection, connectors and cabling, logic control and visualization, robotics, pneumatics, enclosures, machine safety, and motion control.
Terry also touches on pertinent industry news examining the correlation between automation and artificial intelligence and the potential implications on certain job sectors.
Our special guest this episode is Ameer Ratrout, Sales Engineer from Phoenix Contact. Ameer elaborates on Phoenix Contact's focus on power quality, discussing the dire consequences and potential issues that can arise without robust power reliability.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Welcome to RunMode, an industrial automation podcast by PowerMation.
In today's episode, we'll talk more in-depth about PowerMation product offerings.
We'll touch on some related industry news, and we have a special guest,
Amir, from Phoenix Contact to talk to us about power reliability.
As you remember, last episode, we talked about the history of PowerMation.
(00:31):
Let's talk about what PowerMation has to offer its customers.
PowerMation is a high-tech automation distributor, and when you check out our
line card, you'll see robotics, pneumatics, enclosures, machine safety,
motion control, panel components,
process automation, power transmission.
Sensing and inspection, connectors and cabling, logic control and visualization,
(00:55):
and industrial internet and industrial network. work.
Let's talk about some industry news, automation and artificial intelligence.
They kind of go hand in hand, but with AI hype, which jobs might be affected by AI?
Forbes article just released last March about four industries which could be impacted by AI.
Most impacted jobs may be finance and banking, revenue generation,
(01:18):
or maybe transaction monitoring so that you make Make sure you don't spend too much or save too little.
Media and marketing. Currently, reporters are using some of those services like
ChatGPT to write news articles.
However, they are often criticized for providing false information.
Legal services. There is an attorney that wrote or that used ChatGPT to publish
(01:43):
a 14-page legal paper in Social Science Research Network. work.
A lot of information in there that was all generated via AI.
Maybe some of those least impacted jobs, and that's where AI and automation
are a little bit different.
In our business, we talk a lot more about automation, and that's primarily manufacturing
and factory worker area.
(02:05):
Automation has the highest impacts or has had impact.
Maybe you speed up a process, maybe improve overall a.
Equipment effectiveness. Where AI does play a role is in robotics.
You can use AI vision systems to realize where the box is when it's being put on a pallet.
You can also look at handwritten notes and determine what work needs to be done.
(02:27):
Earth Day was on April 22nd. The industry and the world are moving towards alternative
energy sources like wind and
solar, energy storage solutions like hydrogen and battery technologies,
and energy conversion and delivery solutions to bring that power to where it's needed.
Today, we talk with Phoenix Contact about those types of products.
(02:50):
We're here with Amir from Phoenix Contact. Why don't you introduce yourself
and a little bit about Phoenix Contact? Yeah, thanks for having me, Terry.
My name is Amir. I'm one of Phoenix Contact sales engineers based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I've been with the company for three years now. It's been an awesome time getting
to know the industry and the ins and outs. As far as Phoenix Contact goes,
we are a global market leader based out of Germany.
(03:13):
We produce future-oriented products and components for the electrical controls,
networking, and automation world.
Most folks, I would say, know us for our innovative terminal blocks,
but we've grown to be a manufacturer that does a lot more than that.
So pretty much what I tell everyone is anything you can find in an industrial
control cabinet, Phoenix Contact probably has an offering for.
(03:33):
So power supplies, UPSs, relays, surge suppressors, Ethernet switches, PLCs, you name it.
If it goes on a din rail inside an industrial control cabinet,
we probably have a solution for it.
Like I said, we're based out of Germany. The company was founded in 1923.
So last year we celebrated our 100th year anniversary, which is an incredible
(03:54):
milestone for any company to reach.
And the U.S. subsidiary has been around since 1981. 81.
Our U.S. headquarters are located in beautiful Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
I don't know if you've had the chance to be out. I have, and you do a layover
when you go there, unless you want to drive.
That is the frustrating part. I've had to connect through Newark once or twice, but it's amazing.
(04:15):
I spent a year out there when I first started with the company,
and yeah, it was a good time.
The facility out there houses our manufacturing and logistics operations to
support both North and South America.
Yeah, and you know you've made it when like a fill-up screwdriver,
right? You know you made it when everybody calls it the Phoenix Contact Connector.
So part of that is the inside the control panel, the power, power coming in,
(04:39):
power going out, and a lot of the conversations around power reliability.
In your experience, what happens when you don't take that seriously,
when you don't take that quality of the power seriously? What kind of things can happen?
The analogy that I most commonly use is, you know, essentially the power of
the cabinet is the heart of the cabinet.
Without power, not much can be accomplished, right? So in an industrial control
(05:02):
cabinet, you've typically got single phase or three phase power coming in that
needs to be brought down to 24 volt DC to field all the other panel components
as well as field devices.
And if there is any disruptions in that power, then the logic platform is basically rendered useless.
So from Phoenix Contact's perspective, I would say true power reliability is
comprised of four different pillars.
(05:23):
We've got protection, conversion, monitoring, and distribution.
So when we're talking about protection, we're talking about all our offerings
that address overcurrent and overvoltage situations.
So our surge suppressors and device circuit breakers. When we're talking about
conversion, we're talking about, again, converting the AC power to DC power
(05:43):
while providing redundancy and battery backup.
When we're talking monitoring, we're monitoring for faults in the system through
the use of voltage transducers, current transducers, monitoring relays, and energy meters.
And lastly, you know, distributing that protected, converted,
monitored power to end devices and field devices through the use of terminal blocks.
(06:05):
So in order to have true power reliability, all those four pillars need to be
adopted into the system.
So the question that sometimes comes up in people's minds is like being proactive, right?
So if you put a surge suppressor on your computer at home because you know the
power outside the building or outside your house is going to give you noise,
(06:26):
it's going to trip something, it's going to blow up your computer.
Fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I actually had a customer call me the other day.
They plugged in a USB cord from a controller into their laptop and their laptop smoked.
Literally the smoke rolled out of it. And now he's scrambling to try to get
his programs off the old laptop, can the hard drive work and all that stuff.
So what are some of the other challenges that you ran into in talking to customers
(06:49):
or that you've seen or heard from your colleagues over the years?
I would say the example that you just shared is a typical situation that we
run into, especially when it comes to the protection pillar.
In most cases, I feel like search suppression is almost an afterthought where...
A customer only really considers using surge suppressors when a problem happens,
(07:09):
when in reality it should be more of a proactive measure that's put in place
before to not have to run into issues like you described.
So, you know, my proactive way of pitching the surge suppression solution is
using our circle of protection concept.
And what I mean by that is identify what exactly it is that you're looking to
protect in the cabinet, right? It could very well be the entire industrial control
(07:34):
cabinet or the PLC, HMI, and IPC, and draw a circle around it.
And any line or conductor that intersects that circuit is a potential for a
transient to be coupled in and causing problems.
And from there, once you identify the conductors that have the possibility of
introducing transients, we can talk about the appropriate search suppressors
(07:56):
to use to prevent that from happening and elongating the lifespan of the system.
And for Phoenix Contact, we have what we call our limited lifetime warranty.
So if you use our search suppressors in conjunction with our power supplies,
anything that is downstream from those components is covered under our limited lifetime warranty.
(08:28):
So everything from...
Two-year manufacturer warranty is extended to five years, which,
you know, when you're making that big of an investment for such a component, you're really.
That's huge. It's huge. Absolutely. So now that you've been under the,
you know, three, you've been there for three years, got a lot under your belt.
You got to have some success stories. Was it?
You saved the day. Right. You saved the day. Yeah. You know,
(08:50):
the one success story that I've been sharing lately has been with an end user in the area.
I got a call from their main engineer, their electrical engineering manager,
basically saying, hey, every time a storm rolls through and we have a mains
interruption, our UPS system is not kicking in.
And after looking into it and identifying the root cause, they came to learn
that in most cases their battery was actually drained and they weren't getting
(09:13):
that information and insight in order to do predictive maintenance.
So, we worked with them to develop an uninterruptible power supply system using
our DC UPSs and batteries.
So, when you use a Phoenix Contact battery with a DC UPS, you get extra diagnostics
and information about the state of the entire system.
And so you get the state of health and state of charge of the battery so that
(09:36):
you're prepared when situations like that arise where a mains interruption is expected.
And they had seven different production lines, all of which were critical to their operations.
It was a discrete manufacturing process, and our UPS was able to ensure that
uptime was always there regardless of what was happening around them,
whether it be storms, mains interruptions from utilities unrelated to storms, so on and so forth.
(10:00):
So that's, that's a success story that I'm very pleased with just because again,
we eliminated a lot of unnecessary downtime and ensured that their production
schedules were being all that.
What about any other pieces of advice you might give somebody that.
Now all of a sudden realizes that they might be a little bit vulnerable to not
being properly protected from a power reliability perspective?
(10:22):
I would say, you know, again, incorporating all those four pillars when designing a system.
So protection, conversion, monitoring, and distribution are crucial to have
a strong and solid, powerfully reliable system.
And then, you know, the circle of protection concept that I shared earlier would
be a good one also, just proactively use when designing new systems and machines.
(10:45):
So if you had a crystal ball, tell the audience all the things that Phoenix
is going to release in the next 18 months. No, just kidding.
That's always a topic of like, Ooh, I don't want to talk about anything we're going to release.
And I've heard a story where they said, if you can't drop it on your foot,
you shouldn't be talking about it.
But I mean, what are some of the things, what do you think the future might
look like around power reliability?
(11:05):
You know, I would say, you know, as far as our offerings go,
we're, we're seeing a lot of advancement in our electronic circuit breaker systems
and offerings and our power supplies.
So the most recent innovative solution that we've released is our third generation
of TRIO power supplies, where we actually have an integrated electronic circuit
breaker in the power supply.
So it's a two-in-one solution where you're powering and protecting your end devices.
(11:29):
And off of that same power supply, you can have NAC class two outputs,
which in the past, you typically had to have a dedicated power supply for such
circuits. So, you know, it's, Phoenix is always innovating.
I mean, like I said earlier, we're known for our innovative terminal blocks.
That's true and tried technology that to this day, we're still innovating.
So I can only imagine what the future holds for power reliability. liability.
(11:50):
So you're saying that if you were talking to somebody three weeks ago,
you could probably talk to somebody about something new today,
which is always kind of fun because things are coming out the door.
You guys are on top of it, making your case for these types of topics.
Well, thanks for spending time with us.
Any final thoughts to the audience, any recommendations, any...
(12:13):
Information you might want to lure them in to having a meeting with you?
Sure. Yeah. No, I would say as far as learning more about Phoenix Contact Power
Reliability, our website is a great first stop for that.
We have a lot of information on there about our products and solutions and the markets that we serve.
If you're looking to get in touch with your local Phoenix Contact sales team,
just go to your search engine of choice and look up Phoenix Contact, find a product expert.
(12:37):
You're going to get a zip code lookup tool, punch in your zip code and you'll
have the contact information of your entire local sales team from Phoenix Contact
who are more than happy and willing
to get in and help you out with your industrial control cabinet needs.
Thanks, Amir, for sitting with us today. And as always, you can contact your
PowerMation salesperson for more information on PowerLab and Phoenix Contact. Thanks.
(13:03):
We'd like to thank you and Amir from Phoenix Contact for joining us today.
Subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel to stay up to date on future
episodes. See you next time!
Music.
Music.
(00:06):
Welcome to RunMode, an industrial automation podcast by PowerMation.
In today's episode, we'll talk more in-depth about PowerMation product offerings.
We'll touch on some related industry news, and we have a special guest,
Amir, from Phoenix Contact to talk to us about power reliability.
As you remember, last episode, we talked about the history of PowerMation.
(00:31):
Let's talk about what PowerMation has to offer its customers.
PowerMation is a high-tech automation distributor, and when you check out our
line card, you'll see robotics, pneumatics, enclosures, machine safety,
motion control, panel components,
process automation, power transmission.
Sensing and inspection, connectors and cabling, logic control and visualization,
(00:55):
and industrial internet and industrial network. work.
Let's talk about some industry news, automation and artificial intelligence.
They kind of go hand in hand, but with AI hype, which jobs might be affected by AI?
Forbes article just released last March about four industries which could be impacted by AI.
Most impacted jobs may be finance and banking, revenue generation,
(01:18):
or maybe transaction monitoring so that you make Make sure you don't spend too much or save too little.
Media and marketing. Currently, reporters are using some of those services like
ChatGPT to write news articles.
However, they are often criticized for providing false information.
Legal services. There is an attorney that wrote or that used ChatGPT to publish
(01:43):
a 14-page legal paper in Social Science Research Network. work.
A lot of information in there that was all generated via AI.
Maybe some of those least impacted jobs, and that's where AI and automation
are a little bit different.
In our business, we talk a lot more about automation, and that's primarily manufacturing
and factory worker area.
(02:05):
Automation has the highest impacts or has had impact.
Maybe you speed up a process, maybe improve overall a.
Equipment effectiveness. Where AI does play a role is in robotics.
You can use AI vision systems to realize where the box is when it's being put on a pallet.
You can also look at handwritten notes and determine what work needs to be done.
(02:27):
Earth Day was on April 22nd. The industry and the world are moving towards alternative
energy sources like wind and
solar, energy storage solutions like hydrogen and battery technologies,
and energy conversion and delivery solutions to bring that power to where it's needed.
Today, we talk with Phoenix Contact about those types of products.
(02:50):
We're here with Amir from Phoenix Contact. Why don't you introduce yourself
and a little bit about Phoenix Contact? Yeah, thanks for having me, Terry.
My name is Amir. I'm one of Phoenix Contact sales engineers based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I've been with the company for three years now. It's been an awesome time getting
to know the industry and the ins and outs. As far as Phoenix Contact goes,
we are a global market leader based out of Germany.
(03:13):
We produce future-oriented products and components for the electrical controls,
networking, and automation world.
Most folks, I would say, know us for our innovative terminal blocks,
but we've grown to be a manufacturer that does a lot more than that.
So pretty much what I tell everyone is anything you can find in an industrial
control cabinet, Phoenix Contact probably has an offering for.
(03:33):
So power supplies, UPSs, relays, surge suppressors, Ethernet switches, PLCs, you name it.
If it goes on a din rail inside an industrial control cabinet,
we probably have a solution for it.
Like I said, we're based out of Germany. The company was founded in 1923.
So last year we celebrated our 100th year anniversary, which is an incredible
(03:54):
milestone for any company to reach.
And the U.S. subsidiary has been around since 1981. 81.
Our U.S. headquarters are located in beautiful Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
I don't know if you've had the chance to be out. I have, and you do a layover
when you go there, unless you want to drive.
That is the frustrating part. I've had to connect through Newark once or twice, but it's amazing.
(04:15):
I spent a year out there when I first started with the company,
and yeah, it was a good time.
The facility out there houses our manufacturing and logistics operations to
support both North and South America.
Yeah, and you know you've made it when like a fill-up screwdriver,
right? You know you made it when everybody calls it the Phoenix Contact Connector.
So part of that is the inside the control panel, the power, power coming in,
(04:39):
power going out, and a lot of the conversations around power reliability.
In your experience, what happens when you don't take that seriously,
when you don't take that quality of the power seriously? What kind of things can happen?
The analogy that I most commonly use is, you know, essentially the power of
the cabinet is the heart of the cabinet.
Without power, not much can be accomplished, right? So in an industrial control
(05:02):
cabinet, you've typically got single phase or three phase power coming in that
needs to be brought down to 24 volt DC to field all the other panel components
as well as field devices.
And if there is any disruptions in that power, then the logic platform is basically rendered useless.
So from Phoenix Contact's perspective, I would say true power reliability is
comprised of four different pillars.
(05:23):
We've got protection, conversion, monitoring, and distribution.
So when we're talking about protection, we're talking about all our offerings
that address overcurrent and overvoltage situations.
So our surge suppressors and device circuit breakers. When we're talking about
conversion, we're talking about, again, converting the AC power to DC power
(05:43):
while providing redundancy and battery backup.
When we're talking monitoring, we're monitoring for faults in the system through
the use of voltage transducers, current transducers, monitoring relays, and energy meters.
And lastly, you know, distributing that protected, converted,
monitored power to end devices and field devices through the use of terminal blocks.
(06:05):
So in order to have true power reliability, all those four pillars need to be
adopted into the system.
So the question that sometimes comes up in people's minds is like being proactive, right?
So if you put a surge suppressor on your computer at home because you know the
power outside the building or outside your house is going to give you noise,
(06:26):
it's going to trip something, it's going to blow up your computer.
Fingers crossed that doesn't happen. I actually had a customer call me the other day.
They plugged in a USB cord from a controller into their laptop and their laptop smoked.
Literally the smoke rolled out of it. And now he's scrambling to try to get
his programs off the old laptop, can the hard drive work and all that stuff.
So what are some of the other challenges that you ran into in talking to customers
(06:49):
or that you've seen or heard from your colleagues over the years?
I would say the example that you just shared is a typical situation that we
run into, especially when it comes to the protection pillar.
In most cases, I feel like search suppression is almost an afterthought where...
A customer only really considers using surge suppressors when a problem happens,
(07:09):
when in reality it should be more of a proactive measure that's put in place
before to not have to run into issues like you described.
So, you know, my proactive way of pitching the surge suppression solution is
using our circle of protection concept.
And what I mean by that is identify what exactly it is that you're looking to
protect in the cabinet, right? It could very well be the entire industrial control
(07:34):
cabinet or the PLC, HMI, and IPC, and draw a circle around it.
And any line or conductor that intersects that circuit is a potential for a
transient to be coupled in and causing problems.
And from there, once you identify the conductors that have the possibility of
introducing transients, we can talk about the appropriate search suppressors
(07:56):
to use to prevent that from happening and elongating the lifespan of the system.
And for Phoenix Contact, we have what we call our limited lifetime warranty.
So if you use our search suppressors in conjunction with our power supplies,
anything that is downstream from those components is covered under our limited lifetime warranty.
(08:28):
So everything from...
Two-year manufacturer warranty is extended to five years, which,
you know, when you're making that big of an investment for such a component, you're really.
That's huge. It's huge. Absolutely. So now that you've been under the,
you know, three, you've been there for three years, got a lot under your belt.
You got to have some success stories. Was it?
You saved the day. Right. You saved the day. Yeah. You know,
(08:50):
the one success story that I've been sharing lately has been with an end user in the area.
I got a call from their main engineer, their electrical engineering manager,
basically saying, hey, every time a storm rolls through and we have a mains
interruption, our UPS system is not kicking in.
And after looking into it and identifying the root cause, they came to learn
that in most cases their battery was actually drained and they weren't getting
(09:13):
that information and insight in order to do predictive maintenance.
So, we worked with them to develop an uninterruptible power supply system using
our DC UPSs and batteries.
So, when you use a Phoenix Contact battery with a DC UPS, you get extra diagnostics
and information about the state of the entire system.
And so you get the state of health and state of charge of the battery so that
(09:36):
you're prepared when situations like that arise where a mains interruption is expected.
And they had seven different production lines, all of which were critical to their operations.
It was a discrete manufacturing process, and our UPS was able to ensure that
uptime was always there regardless of what was happening around them,
whether it be storms, mains interruptions from utilities unrelated to storms, so on and so forth.
(10:00):
So that's, that's a success story that I'm very pleased with just because again,
we eliminated a lot of unnecessary downtime and ensured that their production
schedules were being all that.
What about any other pieces of advice you might give somebody that.
Now all of a sudden realizes that they might be a little bit vulnerable to not
being properly protected from a power reliability perspective?
(10:22):
I would say, you know, again, incorporating all those four pillars when designing a system.
So protection, conversion, monitoring, and distribution are crucial to have
a strong and solid, powerfully reliable system.
And then, you know, the circle of protection concept that I shared earlier would
be a good one also, just proactively use when designing new systems and machines.
(10:45):
So if you had a crystal ball, tell the audience all the things that Phoenix
is going to release in the next 18 months. No, just kidding.
That's always a topic of like, Ooh, I don't want to talk about anything we're going to release.
And I've heard a story where they said, if you can't drop it on your foot,
you shouldn't be talking about it.
But I mean, what are some of the things, what do you think the future might
look like around power reliability?
(11:05):
You know, I would say, you know, as far as our offerings go,
we're, we're seeing a lot of advancement in our electronic circuit breaker systems
and offerings and our power supplies.
So the most recent innovative solution that we've released is our third generation
of TRIO power supplies, where we actually have an integrated electronic circuit
breaker in the power supply.
So it's a two-in-one solution where you're powering and protecting your end devices.
(11:29):
And off of that same power supply, you can have NAC class two outputs,
which in the past, you typically had to have a dedicated power supply for such
circuits. So, you know, it's, Phoenix is always innovating.
I mean, like I said earlier, we're known for our innovative terminal blocks.
That's true and tried technology that to this day, we're still innovating.
So I can only imagine what the future holds for power reliability. liability.
(11:50):
So you're saying that if you were talking to somebody three weeks ago,
you could probably talk to somebody about something new today,
which is always kind of fun because things are coming out the door.
You guys are on top of it, making your case for these types of topics.
Well, thanks for spending time with us.
Any final thoughts to the audience, any recommendations, any...
(12:13):
Information you might want to lure them in to having a meeting with you?
Sure. Yeah. No, I would say as far as learning more about Phoenix Contact Power
Reliability, our website is a great first stop for that.
We have a lot of information on there about our products and solutions and the markets that we serve.
If you're looking to get in touch with your local Phoenix Contact sales team,
just go to your search engine of choice and look up Phoenix Contact, find a product expert.
(12:37):
You're going to get a zip code lookup tool, punch in your zip code and you'll
have the contact information of your entire local sales team from Phoenix Contact
who are more than happy and willing
to get in and help you out with your industrial control cabinet needs.
Thanks, Amir, for sitting with us today. And as always, you can contact your
PowerMation salesperson for more information on PowerLab and Phoenix Contact. Thanks.
(13:03):
We'd like to thank you and Amir from Phoenix Contact for joining us today.
Subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel to stay up to date on future
episodes. See you next time!
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.