MEP at Columbus State Develops Comprehensive Automation Plan

Pinnacle Metal Products provides design, fabrication, and installation services of miscellaneous steel for the construction industry. They are a family-owned single-location business located in Columbus, Ohio.

Over the lifetime of the company incremental technological improvements to the manufacturing facility have been implemented by the owner of the business to improve safety and throughput but have been constrained by a limited amount of time to put into further researching and implementing new technologies. MEP at Columbus State, part of the Ohio MEP and the MEP National Network™, was brought in to take on this challenge.

To resolve this challenge, the MEP at Columbus State proposed the development of a comprehensive automation plan with a focus on proposing solutions that were modular and could be implemented across multiple process areas. To determine where oppurtunities were present, the existing processes were documented and analyzed for oppurtunities for improvement. A comprehensive user requirement document was generated for each identified opportunity to then request proposals from specific automation and material handling solution providers. Using this information, a comprehensive plan was developed to summarize the automation solutions throughout the facility and develop the business case.