Crown Control Systems Limited

THE CHALLENGE

Crown Control Systems engineers were requested to provide software support for the X-Type Jaguar body shop at Halewood, Merseyside. The initial work involved solving software faults reported by Jaguar maintenance. This required a thorough understanding of both the software specification and the operation of the plant. Over a period of one month Crown’s engineers solved over twenty faults, mainly on the bodyside lines. A noticeable reduction in downtime was achieved.

THE SOLUTION

The software was written off-line during production. On commencement of Shutdown, the new software was loaded. Unfortunately, the mechanical tooling couldn’t be installed, so Crown adapted the new software to enable it to run on the existing tooling. The software proved so successful that the plant was back in full production one and a half days ahead of schedule. The new tooling was finally installed in March 2003.

THE RESULT

Crown were awarded the commissioning work to integrate the new tooling into the existing line. This work was completed on time within budget. Crown were also required to document the estate variant software to allow Comau to commission the machine as and when the estate variant became available. The documentation provided was comprehensive enough for Comau to complete the estate variant commissioning with no further assistance from Crown.