Established in 2007, Vietnam’s Qui Long Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Technology Co. is a contractor with extensive experience. The company offers consultancy, design, supply, construction and installation of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems plus mechanical and engineering works for the life sciences industry, hygiene environments and hospital facilities.
Qui Long prides itself on the delivery of prestigious and high-quality work. However, the needs of clients in the industry are increasingly complex and often subject to stringent regulation. Qui Long has to be at the forefront of helping to meet these changing requirements.
Assessing industry-specific challenges
Qui Long and Rockwell Automation worked together because of the latter’s proven capability in the life sciences industry. Qui Long wanted support from Rockwell Automation to develop connected solutions for its technology that would transform its own internal processes and could also be offered to its customers. The overall objectives were to increase efficiency (including faster time to market), minimise risks and offer a single overview of system status at any time; all while lowering costs.
Qui Long had also seen the limitations of HVAC systems that use conventional Direct Digital Control (DDC) devices and needed to work with Rockwell Automation to develop a solution. DDC controllers are not flexible in terms of design and program, and have limitations including difficulty to connect to different systems and the ability to only connect to basic HVAC systems. In addition, Qui Long was relying on a third party to develop the program and when changes were required, the process was not flexible or swift enough for Qui Long’s needs.
A further challenge was that Qui Long was experiencing trends in the life sciences industry where companies were looking to upgrade to newer and higher standards/compliance (Europe or FDA), which in turn required higher levels of automation control and information systems. The regulatory requirements also extended to data integrity and electronic record keeping, so Qui Long needed solutions that would help it to meet these requirements for end users.
A connected solution that benefits the end user
Following discussions between Rockwell Automation and Qui Long, a set of products and solutions were decided upon. These were easy to use and maintain and allowed Qui Long to develop optimised solutions for end users:
- Stratix® switches (5700, 2000)
- Software: FactoryTalk® View Site Edition (SE), FactoryTalk® Viewpoint, FactoryTalk® Historian, FactoryTalk® VantagePoint; including:
- Centralized SCADA system with FactoryTalk® View SE for HVAC supervisory control. The SCADA system easily allows connectivity from machines and utilities
- FactoryTalk® Historian & FactoryTalk® VantagePoint for data collection and reporting to reduce manual works
- Power management system to monitor the energy consumption in each production cell and help customers to optimise energy usage
- Ethernet/IP network that integrates seamlessly with IT solutions
Due to the straightforward and flexible nature of the solutions from Rockwell Automation, Qui Long is able to develop and optimise them for their own customers. For example, the Connected Controllers allow control of temperature, pressure and air flow in each air handling unit (AHU) to link up with chillers and PowerFlex® drives help to improve flexible design and implementation.