The First Mikewill Project: Barcode Test Routing for Americold Compressor
The Cullman plant built hermetic compressors for household refrigerators and freezers at volume. Every unit had to be tested, and the ones that failed had to be pulled to a repair station — without an operator tracking each compressor by hand and without stalling the line behind it.
Mikewill built a barcode-driven routing system: Adaptascan readers identified each compressor as it arrived, and the controls routed it into a test station, then on to a repair station if the test called for it. The logic ran on SLC500 PLCs over DeviceNet, with PanelView HMIs for the operators.
How it came together
Mike Bearden had just left a Huntsville integrator that was closing its doors. One of the customers he had served asked him to take on a project his employer wasn't willing to do. He did — and Mikewill Automation existed from that moment on.
The customer was Americold Compressor in Cullman, Alabama, a plant that had been building compressors since the 1960s and turned out hermetic compressors for household refrigerators and food freezers. They wanted every compressor identified and routed automatically: into a test station, and then into a repair station if the test said so.
The tooling of the day was Allen-Bradley SLC500 PLCs, Adaptascan barcode readers, DeviceNet communication, and the original PanelView HMIs. Mike is the first to admit it was a challenge — the technology was bleeding edge and the margin for error was thin.
It worked. The project led to more work, and it set the pattern that still defines the company: be the one to call when the job is hard. Or, as the motto goes — if it were easy, someone easy could do it.
Ready to automate your world?
Tell us about your line, your bottleneck, or the toughest project on your list. We're ready to dig in.