Louis Dreyfus Commodities operates an ethanol plant in Norfolk, Nebraska. The plant needed a new operating system, but could not afford to lose any production time. Trident worked with plant managers to design a system and process that could be installed during a scheduled 3-day outage. For 12 weeks, teams did pre-engineering work in Wisconsin with installation designed to take hours instead of days. On site, engineers removed an APACS DCS, then installed a customized cabling system to use existing field terminations. The entire system was programmed on PCS 7. During installation, critical control was regained in four hours and the plant never felt the full impact of any downtime.

In just 60 hours, Trident Automation delivered a new operating system for the largest dry-mill ethanol facility in the country. Marquis Energy was constructing a second 100+ million gallon unit and owners wanted to have both units on the same, most advanced system. The plant was operating on a Siemens APACS DCS legacy system with Wonderware HMI, but needed to modernize the plant and leverage the advanced control strategies Siemens PCS7 offered. Over twelve weeks, Trident teams rewrote code, reconfigured logic, created new graphics, pre-assembled and tested thousands of connections, cables and components offsite at their headquarters. Pre-labeling I/O, organizing connections, and utilizing our innovative cabling solution helped the teams eliminate days of downtime and the rip and replace was completed ahead of schedule with no production downtime.

CertainTeed Corporation, a manufacturer of building products, re-opened a plant in Mississippi that had been idled during the economic downturn. The plant had been shut down for four years, but during the ramp up phase Trident teams recommended demolishing existing control systems. The equipment had been idled, was outdated when the plant closed and no longer met production requirements. Trident designed and built 26 DCS and BMS control panels in Wisconsin, then shipped them to the plant. Teams were on site to install, test and start up the operating system. The result is CertainTeed was able to reopen, provide jobs for the region and start serving customers.

The Marquette Board of Light and Power is a municipal electric utility serving approximately 17,000 customers in the city of Marquette nine townships in Marquette County, Michigan. They commissioned a replacement control system and burner management system for their 50mw plant. Trident collaborated with our partner, Siemens, to design a control system for the plant, but our team members were on start for installation and start-up. During start-up, we were called on to trouble-shoot and adjust the system to maximize operation.

The Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company is charged with maintaining uniform water flow through the Wisconsin River Reservoir System for commerce and for environmental reasons. The organization hired Trident to design and implement a system that would meet their operational needs. There are 25 dams on the river, most owned by different power companies, and none had the same equipment. In addition to technology, state and federal regulatory agencies were involved in the project. Trident integrated 50 years of previous data into a new system from dams, U.S. geological gauges, the U.S. Weather Service, individual utilities and manual observers. Some data was collected in real time, some data was submitted on postcards from manual observers. Trident designed a monitoring system and database that is now controlled in a central location.

International Papers Kaukauna mill was operating with a very outdated system. Due to the age of the controls, it was the last of its kind in operation and could not be repaired to guarantee effective operation. Over a period of months, Trident worked collaboratively with plant managers to re-engineer a system with the objective of installing it in only 2-3 days. Due to planning and on-site execution, our teams were able to install the new system in two days and be on site for start up. The company realized no down time or interruption in production as a result.

Georgia Pacific needed a new control system on one of their most important paper machines that was damaged and out of production, but had pending orders. Damage was too extensive for repairs and the system had to be replaced. Normally a tight replacement schedule would have taken several weeks or months, but all three of Trident’s principal owners worked around the clock to design, engineer, configure and install a new, customized control system in only three weeks. Trident was on site for the start up and the machine was back in production.

Key Lakes Shipping operates gigantic ore boats on the Great Lakes. The largest of these is 1,000 feet and regularly carried thousands of pounds of iron ore and other materials. Trident was asked to automate the ballast system so crew members could adjust ballast remotely from tablet PCs rather than walking up and down seven flights of stairs from hold to the pilot house. First, engineers had to automate a manual system for the barge, then enhanced it with wireless controls. Now the system can be controlled quickly, easily and accurately.