In the beginning , there were four or five employees working in production , and two in the office . However , the need to try something new soon became clear : electrical panels were very simple products with low margins , so the company began to explore new avenues and to grow . This desire for diversification led CAREL to start manufacturing humidifiers , initially for the same customer , Hiross . These humidifiers operated using immersed electrodes in a disposable cylinder with a plastic casing , appliances that today are quite common , yet at the time were highly innovative . It took a few months to go from designing to marketing this first product , with an external consultant providing the design and production of an elementary analogue controller , while the company designed and built the water circuit . Initially it was an uphill struggle , but after a few attempts HUMITRONIC was released in 1978 .
In 1986 , CAREL entered the programmable electronic controllers sector , and indeed was one of its pioneers . At the time a gradual transition from analogue to digital was underway , with its technologies being applied to products . At the same time , the company grew not only by expanding its range , but also and above all at an organisational level , applying the lean philosophy from the early 2000s .
CAREL ’ s history of sustainability began when the Group was founded in 1973 . Over time , technologies , needs and sensitivities have evolved , and with these also the objectives and means to achieve them . Today , even more than yesterday , the strategy that drives innovation in the Group can be best defined as ‘ sustainable success .’ This strategy guides the continuous search for solutions developed to guarantee high efficiency and energy savings , whatever approach is adopted by customers and partners in the construction of their refrigeration units and systems .
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1988 : HOW THE VISION CAME TO LIFE
The following Q & A is provided by Giandomenico Lombello , CAREL group managing director and Umberto Bianchini , innovation manager .
When was the idea for a programmable controller conceived , and why ?
Lombello : Today , electronic controllers are either parametric or programmable . Parametric controllers are designed for vertical applications - they have multiple parameters to choose from ( at times more than 200 ), and manufacturers can thus adapt them to suit their specific application . However , everything is predefined .
Programmable controllers , on the other hand , are typically used for more powerful , more complex and more expensive units , and allow manufacturers to fully define their own programming strategies . In the 1980s , the only controllers available in our sector were parametric .
We came up with a series of ideas that brought about a major innovation and determined our success as a company . It might sound simple , but it wasn ’ t . When the visionaries who came up with the ideas explained them to our engineers they sounded crazy , as they had set a goal to be achieved regardless of the technological difficulties involved .
Yet it was this determination to not give up that was the key to our success .
Lombello : Our main customer wanted controllers for complex units designed by CAREL engineers , with advanced skills who worked using assembler , a machine code language . CAREL thus had the intuition of developing a controller that could be programmed directly by the customer , while considering that customers had electrical , mechanical and thermodynamic engineering expertise , but were certainly not software programmers . We invented a CAD software that made it possible to control the unit by putting
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All images supplied by CAREL
A drone ’ s view of the current
together a number of basic functions that customers could access from a CAREL library . In the exact same way as they were used to doing when selecting the electromechanical components to make an electrical panel .
What steps did CAREL need to take operationally to develop the first software for programmable controllers ?
Bianchini : We created a programming environment with virtual software objects ( even though we didn ’ t know they were called this at the time ) that our customers , electrical and mechanical engineers , knew how to connect together because they already did so in other areas - this was the basis for the initial programming system .
We developed a simple program that compiled the blocks that the customer had selected and allowed debugging . The software was called EasyTools , and for the first few years it was only tested and used internally . Then , in the early 1990s , we started offering it to customers . It was quite innovative at the time .
Moreover , we had set ourselves an additional challenge : to make the software independent of the hardware . In other words , software that could be moved to different controllers , following technological evolutions . This meant customers could
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protect their investment even when the hardware changed .
Lombello : Hardware independence and simplicity of the development environment using CAD made knowledge of assembler language unnecessary , allowing customers to work autonomously even if they were not programmers : back then , this was totally innovative .
How has programming evolved over time ?
Lombello : CAREL has changed the market dynamics in its sector , changing the work flows and roles of the different stakeholders . Specifically , we shifted the sale of control systems from being typically for installers ( who purchased , installed and configured the controllers ) to unit manufacturers , i . e . OEM ’ s . By having simplified the programming of electronic controllers , OEMs were able adopt what is known as downstream integration . They brought unit control in-house and therefore were able to start supplying the market with finished units , that to be installed , simply required connecting the electrical parts and fluid circuits .
Then ‘ smart ’ components came to the fore , with superior performance and higher reliability , capable of adapting to different operating conditions . This gave even greater importance to software tools that allowed users to easily install and manage complex devices . The next evolution will involve improvements in self-diagnostics and predictive management of unit failures .
The way forward is to connect more and more units , collect data and develop intelligent algorithms . CAREL currently has around one million units under supervision , at least 300 000 of which are connected to our cloud . CLA
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