IDEC Engineering Insights #5, part 1: a tech expert who’s witnessed the evolution of our products and solutions

Anyone who works with technology will soon learn how quickly it evolves.

Industry 4.0 has given many businesses – especially manufacturers – the opportunity to drastically enhance their safety and control systems, device connectivity, automation, and the sheer amount of data they have access to. The future can only bring more of these solutions, potentially at an even faster pace.

Alex Chew, a regional technical and product manager at IDEC APAC, has seen our product lineup rapidly advance and diversify to match customer needs over more than 6 years in the role. We interviewed him recently to get his perspective.

Since May 2019, so it’s been 6 years plus. My background is in electrical engineering.

I’d say it’s IDEC’s presence across various industries — especially automotive — that stands out.

Sometimes I wonder what the production floors of those major automotive players look like, enabling them to produce millions of cars annually while maintaining high standards of worker safety. After learning about IDEC’s strong presence and contributions in this space, I genuinely wish to see it with my own eyes.

IDEC excels at developing innovative products and solutions that prioritize simplicity and safety, and which are user centric.

Safety Commander™. It’s a streamlined product that combines safety and convenience while aligning with the latest industrial trends.

Since joining IDEC, I’ve witnessed our products and solutions evolve from traditional Safety 1.0 to the intelligent, Collaborative Safety 2.0 era.

Yes, I’ve been to various product-related and safety-related training sessions. There were two sessions worth sharing here.

The first was the Certified Machine Safety Expert Training conducted by PILZ. Although PILZ and IDEC may be competitors in certain areas, we share a common goal: to promote the well-being of workplaces worldwide. With that shared purpose, everyone in the classroom freely exchanged information and ideas, regardless of company background.

The second was the ez-Wheel Assist Wheel Drive training conducted by our colleagues at HQ. It was an advanced, hands-on, on-site session that gave us a detailed look at the product — down to each sub-component. I really appreciate this kind of face-to-face training, where we can see and touch the hardware. It sparks more Q&A and deeper insights from the trainer. We find that training is only truly effective this way. If time and budget allow, we would always prefer to offer this level of detailed training to our customers.

Seeing a customer’s problem solved with an IDEC solution.

I still remember one of our customers in Singapore approaching us for the simplest solution to bring their automation system data to the cloud, using their existing IDEC FC6A MicroSmart Plus PLC, which had been installed a year earlier. Due to space and cost constraints, they preferred not to add any additional components.

We were pleased to fulfil this request with almost zero cost — simply by updating the PLC firmware and performing a few configurations. The updated firmware included support for the MQTT protocol, which enabled the customer to upload PLC data to the AWS cloud with minimal effort, thanks to the user-friendly programming software of our IDEC PLC.

IDEC creates smart, safe, and user-friendly solutions that keep pace with modern industrial demands.