Located in Omuta City in Fukuoka Prefecture which is famous for its epic "Daija Yama" (great snake) summer festival, Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium Co., Ltd. manufactures and sells aluminium alloy billets and slabs, high-purity aluminium, alloys for aluminium casting, materials for aluminum forging, aluminium-cast products, parts for semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and other products.

We had the opportunity to visit with Messers Kuboi and Makishima of the Facilities Management Department, Maintenance Group, who are in charge of repair, maintenance, and inspection of electronic equipment in the overall factory. We learned how Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium is using the UPM100 and InfoEnergy energy-saving support system for power management and monitoring in the factory, and how the DX1000 Network Data Acquisition Station (paperless recorder) is helping them record temperature and current in their high-purity aluminium refining furnaces.

Mr. Makishima: "We connected the InfoEnergy energy-saving support system to the UPM100 to build a multi-power management and monitoring system that fit the size of our factory."
Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium was forced to consider oversized solutions because most power monitoring systems had a fixed number of input channels; they could not seem to find a system that matched their factory's size.

Mr. Makishima: "The UPM100's flexible configuration was very attractive. We could add it to a single InfoEnergy unit at first, and then expand the system gradually as needed." Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium slowly added on to the system over a three year period, and currently has sixty UPM100s connected to four InfoEnergy units. They added graphics such as schematic diagrams to their monitoring screen for seamless management and monitoring of not only watt hours, but also voltage, current, power, frequency, and other phenomena.

Mr. Makishima: "Just looking at the UPM by itself, it has the big advantage of being able to connect directly to a 440 voltage. Moreover, we didn't need a VT (voltage transformer), and we liked that. The UPM's unique wireless functions were also really helpful. The factory is spread out over a wide area, so it can be very expensive to lay dedicated cables and communication lines for data acquisition. With the wireless functions we don't have to do any extra infrastructure work, and power data from equipment across the floor can be received and recorded wirelessly through the UPMs."

Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium records signals from the various controllers at the high-purity aluminium refining furnaces using the DX1000.

Mr. Kuboi: "We started using the DX1000 as a replacement for our chart recorders. All said, its biggest advantage is that it's 'paper-free.' The fact that we don't have to worry about refilling paper and ink makes it much easier to manage. When we had a large number of units, changing the paper and ink was a huge inconvenience. Then there were also problems with paper jams and slippage."
Not only do they no longer have to replace chart paper and ink ribbons, but they also do not have to incur costs of storing chart paper and purchasing replacement parts.

Mr. Kuboi: "When there's trouble, I used to dump out the box of chart paper and search through the records, but now I can find the data I need immediately on the PC. That's a big change. Eventually I plan to network all the recorders together so we can manage the data electronically from a single station."

As a qualified person for energy management, Mr. Makishima is also an active member of the company's "Energy Saving Action" project. The project is taking energy saving initiatives based on monitoring data from the UPM.

Kyushu Mitsui Aluminium Co. Ltd. is also using the UT350 Digital Indicating Controller for temperature control of its burning appliances.