VEO invests strongly in the continuous development of automation solutions

Last year, VEO decided to further develop automation operations through several measures, the two most concrete examples being the implementation of common guidelines for automation programming and feedback interviews with customers.

Process know-how without “grey areas”

The key to success in process automation is to fully understand the process in question. Over the past decades, VEO’s process knowledge has expanded from power generation to the process industry. Nowadays, VEO offers automation solutions to all customer segments, including cybersecurity services to both old and new systems. As VEO’s turnkey deliveries often include both electrification and automation solutions, our customers benefit from the synergy effect this creates, since VEO has both automation and electrification experts working as one team.

“When we program an automation software application, there are no grey areas, since the electrification equipment and automation system function together seamlessly”, says Tero Lehtimäki, Automation Expert from VEO. “We also run an extensive factory acceptance test, where we test both systems and comprehensively simulate the processes, which significantly minimises the risk of fault situations and security defects occurring later”, Lehtimäki continues.

Common guidelines for consistency and efficiency

At VEO, we know that a secure and optimised automation system brings significant added value to our customers. This is why we have every reason to constantly develop VEO’s working methods and software applications to meet our customers’ expectations successfully, also in future. As part of this continuous development, VEO has implemented a Common Way of Programming (CWoP) since 2018, which means using common guidelines for programming automation software and a library for tested and validated automation software blocks. For VEO, this creates opportunities for the more effective and flexible use of different programmers, thus enabling the standardisation of program segments.

“From the customers’ point of view, this strengthens our profile as a multi-brand supplier, as it enables portability between different PLC brands. We can deliver an automation solution for any brand our customer chooses to use. The common guidelines also free resources by eliminating overlapping work, which gives us competitive strength”, says Engineering Manager, Mats Warg.

Enhanced user-friendliness based on customer feedback

VEO’s commitment to developing its automation products has also resulted in interviews with both new and long-term customers in Finland and the Nordics. Through the interviews, VEO has managed to learn about improvements that users wanted to be made in the displays used to control the process.

“For our customers, the displays, i.e. HMI’s (human-machine interfaces), are the most visible part of an automation system. We have now made several improvements in terms of usability and visualisation of the process in line with the customer feedback we received. In addition, the control panels and displays now have matching colours and appearances”, says Mats Warg.