May 15, 2001, about 9:30 a.m.: A small fire breaks out in a dryer at the Ansonia, Conn., plant of Latex Foam International (LFI), a maker of premium latex mattress and pillow components. LFI management calls the local fire department.

About 10:30 a.m.: The flames in the dryer are extinguished. LFI executives order pizzas for employees and the fire crew, and head for the back side of the building to thank the fire chief. They swing open the plant’s multiple, large bay doors to let the smoke clear from the facility. It is a windy day.

The wind swirls through the plant, quickly clearing the smoke. But it also apparently contributes to reigniting the flames in the dryer, which then spread rapidly to some nearby mattress cores and beyond. The fire crew, who have already rolled up their hoses, are unable to reengage in time to stop the now escalating blaze. Thankfully, none of the company’s 240 employees are harmed in the ensuing inferno. But the 258,000 square foot facility—LFI’s only plant—is totally destroyed by the fire. With it go all of the company’s inventory, records and equipment.

That’s the way that John Coffey, LFI executive vice president and chief information officer, remembers that devastating day in May for the privately held firm, founded in 1975. But what happened next provides an example of how Yankee perseverance, combined with the latest in factory automation, was able to turn adversity into advantage.

LFI is the only North American manufacturer of latex foam using what is called the Talalay process—a method that produces a high quality, highly resilient and breathable material used in premium latex mattresses and pillows. At the time of the fire, the company held the dominant U.S. market share for this material, against European and Asian imports. And despite the shock of losing the plant, LFI wasted no time in taking steps to protect that position.

“There was a big show going on in Germany, where all the latex manufacturers were,” Coffey recalls. “In fact, we had a booth over there, and in less than 48 hours after the fire, we were on the ground in Germany buying up all of the excess capacity we could get our hands on to keep our customers going.”

That bought time for LFI executives to consider their options. One was to shut down operations and liquidate the company. “But we basically kept going forward with the intention of rebuilding,” Coffey relates. “We were insured, and we knew we had a great product and terrific employees.”

Among other things, LFI seriously considered relocating to Chattanooga, Tenn., where labor costs would be lower, and where city fathers offered some enticing financial incentives. In the end though, the people factor swung the decision to stay in Connecticut, Coffey says. “Technical expertise is a key part of our process, and our trained staff was here,” he notes.

LFI acquired a building in nearby Shelton, Conn., that previously housed a rivet manufacturer, and set about planning to rebuild its process. Given relatively high Northeastern U.S. labor rates, one thing was clear. “We knew that we’d have to automate significantly to be able to survive and stay competitive in a worldwide market using Connecticut labor,” Coffey says.

For help with the automation design, LFI worked with NIC Systems Corp., a Plantsville, Conn., systems integrator that had done automation work for LFI at the previous plant. “We had been working with them since about 1995, so we knew their process pretty well,” says Bob Godard, NIC Systems president.

With NIC’s help, LFI had been automating the old plant prior to the fire on a step-by-step basis as funds became available. That approach had produced improvements, but resulted in what Coffey and Godard alike refer to as “islands of automation.” Individual programmable logic controllers (PLCs) controlled various operations, such as the presses where the latex mattress cores are formed. Each PLC had to be programmed separately. Many operations were manual, and systems were not networked together. So at the Shelton plant, with the opportunity to install a new automation system from scratch, LFI wanted a highly integrated solution that would enable optimum plant-wide process control and efficiency, says Coffey.

LFI considered proposals from various automation suppliers. But LFI executives eventually selected a system to be supplied by Siemens Energy & Automation Inc., based in Alpharetta, Ga., with NIC Systems to be the integrator. “Everything was pretty well fast-tracked. One of their main goals was to make sure that they could ...