Canton Elevator,
Elevators
(Note: SYNTHESIS technology is a pre-cursor to OfficeCAD)

Canton Elevator is moving up with SYNTHESIS.

A portion of this user profile appeared in Elevator World Magazine.
Written by Michelle Greening, The SYNTHESIS Company

January 1996

An independent elevator manufacturer in today's financial climate needs to maintain a competitive edge. Canton Elevator, Inc. remains competitive by using SYNTHESIS software to automate the design and drafting of their hydraulic elevator equipment.

Canton Elevator, Inc. produces everything from stylish passenger elevators for shopping malls to heavy-duty freight elevators. With so much variation in design, it became even more important to respond quickly to customers needs, estimate manufacturing man hours, produce accurate bill of material lists, and maintain high quality. To stay competitive, the company decided to automate portions of its design and drafting effort.

According to David Begue, who heads up the engineering automation effort at Canton, the Ohio company's primary reason to automate was to speed response time to customers while maintaining high quality standards. Although a new CAD system helped to increase drawing accuracy, it alone did not sufficiently speed the design process. SYNTHESIS, however, allowed the company to produce accurately engineered manufacturing drawings up to five times faster than before.

The initial effort began in 1990, and in just six weeks, Canton had completed automated production drawings for the first two elevator components. After five months, production drawings for the complete product were ready for use. "The SYNTHESIS software has greatly increased our productivity while maintaining the high degree of accuracy required by our industry", says Mr. Begue.

Growing familiarization with the SYNTHESIS software has since speeded the development of new applications. New automated drawing applications include mechanical freight elevator gates and telescopic buffer assemblies. Several new applications have recently been completed which do not generate AutoCAD drawings, but which use the automated data base and calculation capabilities of SYNTHESIS to quickly and accurately provide information to the Canton engineering department. These applications include an automatic data base of customer and/or locality special requirements for elevator equipment; an analysis of formed shapes sectional properties; and elevator car frame and platform engineering calculations.

Design specifications are entered by the engineering staff. The system performs calculations and engineering procedures, takes care of table look-up functions and drafting, produces a bill of material for shipping and costing, and estimates required shop time for manufacture. Most importantly, the system is designed to verify compatibility of components and assembly combinations, and to ensure compliance with the requirements of the "Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators" (ASME A17.1).

In the future, Canton Elevator Inc. plans to continue design automation, add a department linking data base, and automate other standard and/or repetitive engineering functions. Mr. Begue said the company is continuing to make the system more "intelligent" and flexible so that the applications can be easily kept up-to-date with future code and industry evolution.

For more information please contact us at:

Back to Top
 

All products and names are trademarks of their respective owners.