Cooper reports IBEW praise for wireless open circuit detector

St. Louis , MO –

reports that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has recognized the Cooper InVision Downtime-Reduction System as being a product and program that can make a significant impact on its members in the field. The company introduced the system this spring. It uses wireless technology for industrial and commercial applications to reduce downtime and increase productivity by more quickly identifying open-circuit events caused by short circuits and overloads. IBEW praised the system for minimizing potential safety risks to IBEW members and alerting maintenance workers of the correct personal protective equipment (PPE) to bring to the open-circuit location.

Edwin D. Hill, international president of the Washington, D.C.-based organization that is widely recognized as the voice of safety in the electrical industry, calls the Cooper InVision System, “one of the progressive systems IBEW looks forward to seeing implemented in the field as quickly as possible.” Key advantages include ability to “minimize the potential safety risks to IBEW members.…The system also has the potential to significantly reduce the downtime resulting from circuit openings. I can tell you first hand how critical this is for productivity in these highly-competitive times.”

The cost of unscheduled downtime is a problem that plagues most industries, Cooper Bussmann says, citing research that says the average open-circuit event produces 41 minutes of downtime, including 11 minutes on average to notify maintenance and 24 minutes on average for trouble-shooting. Downtime costs can range from $300,000 to millions of dollars per site per hour, the company says. In addition to an idle workforce, downtime causes disruption to an integrated supply chain and the loss of scrapped work-in-process, both of which can be very expensive.

Cooper Bussmann is part of

, a global manufacturer incorporated in Bermuda with administrative headquarters in Houston.

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–Edited by

, Control Engineering

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