minimized the amount of engineering resources we have to expend on maintenance and troubleshooting in final assembly. Instead, we now spend our time designing and manufacturing roasters—not tweaking control systems.”  

Diedrich Manufacturing first began considering the upgrade in early 2004, and by late 2004 was already shipping coffee roasting systems equipped with the new controls. In addition to improving equipment reliability and efficiency, the company has reduced its programming and engineering time by 50 percent.

“What used to take us three weeks to program now takes about three hours,” Williams says. “This saves a significant amount of money in the construction and installation of the system.”

Deidrich Manufacturing coffee roasters are shipped to customers assembled, but still need to be installed. In the past, a software engineer needed to be present at the installation, but now a compact flash card including programming code can be provided for any installer to plug in. Additionally, with the Ethernet upgrade, the roasters are now more attractive to customers because Ethernet gives them easy remote connectivity.

“We’ve been very impressed with the Rockwell Automation technology and look forward to applying this platform to further improve our product quality and performance,” Williams says. “The quality of our equipment is what has always distinguished Diedrich.

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