www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za RACA Journal I September 2023 21
Business 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 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
“ 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 .” 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 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 . RACA
Francesco Nalini , CEO of the CAREL Group .
www . refrigerationandaircon . co . za RACA Journal I September 2023 21