Box Plant 2000 - With Only Less than 20 Spare Parts, 1992 Corrugated Containers Conference Proceedings

Robert S. Argabright, II--Good Morning! Approximately 10 years ago, I attended a TAPPI Convention held here in Washington, D.C. One of the technical papers presented at that conference was on the Programmable Logic Controller as it applied to the corrugator. At that time, our Baltimore plant was in the process of rewiring their corrugator and changing out the drives. After hearing about the Programmable Logic Controller, otherwise referred to as PLC, it seemed the only way to go was away from hard wiring to the use of the PLC - This was the direction we pursued.

Programmable Logic Controllers, PLCs, are not new and have been around a long time. What is different is the application and the way we have used the PLC technology in our own plant. A Programmable Logic Controller is basically mini computers that are used to control the I/O functions on different pieces of equipment. This is a slidc of the PLC and what it actually looks like.