In the space of two and half years, the Motor Drive Product Group at
Raytheon Systems in Fife, has grown from an idea to becoming a
commercially viable supplier to customers requiring rather special motor
drive solutions. The group's success was capped last summer when it
picked up a local business award for innovation. Les Hunt reports
Glenrothes, Fife based Raytheon Systems - a subsidiary of the US-based
giant defence electronics and systems group, Raytheon Company - has been
designing, developing and manufacturing high performance, high
reliability motor drive components to customer's specifications for many
years. In 1999, a Motor Drive Products Group was established to provide
well-engineered products for military and extreme environment
applications. This group now employs a full time, dedicated,
multi-disciplinary team of twelve people. David Walker, special projects
manager at Raytheon Systems, explains how it all came about.
We identified that our customers needed suppliers who could manage
sub-system integration of motor and motor drive as a package, and
demonstrate proven technical capability in the area of servo systems.
They also needed suppliers who could provide the right level of support
and service, and naturally they wanted their systems delivered to budget
and on schedule. Customer perception at around the time we conceived the
group was of a supplier base grown complacent, providing neither the
technical performance nor the customer support, price and delivery
required. Key to the group's success has been the forging of a close
commercial and technical working relationship with high performance motor
manufacturer, CDA InterCorp, as Mr Walker explains.
CDA InterCorp has many years of experience in the target markets for
high performance motor applications, and the company has supported
Raytheon System's entry into these markets. This has enabled us to
deliver the optimum sub system that meets the customer's requirements. We
are now working as a team, making joint visits to customers, and have
since secured a number of key development contracts, as a result of these
efforts.
The group's core product suite includes trapezoidal, two phase sinewave,
three phase sinewave and sensorless drives, each available in various
power ranges. The products are based on core functional building blocks,
available off-the-shelf at Fife - a strategy that allows ready
customisation, shorter product development times and reduced customer
engineering effort at the system integration stage. The group has three
development contracts on the go at present, and these are expected to
convert to production contracts worth some £2.5m over the next five
years. They include development and production contracts for down-hole
motor drives, awarded by a Norwegian oil company, as well as programmes
for the military sector involving control of radar and other sensor
systems.
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