What do you use to determine time spent on each function?

[Main Street Carwash]

How are you guys doing this? Separate counters for each function? I have heard some people on here talk about adding usage meters to in bay blowers for instance. Anyone checking usage of every function? If so(or any function at all), what are you using to do so?

 

[MonroeStreetPowerwash]

Interesting question. I have quite a bit of automation already for the wash, but have not really figured out a good solution to this. At one of my sites I am putting in 3 new functions (3x, Air Shamme and Tireshine) and will be running the 24 volts inline to a on/off switch, hour meter and status light. With 4 bays, thats gonna be 12 hour meters to mount to the wall

 

[2Biz]

Even though I'm not currently doing this, I'll share my thoughts. I would think the easiest way would be to use a PLC/PLC's with enough inputs to monitor and record "On Time". Some of the newer PLC's have networking capabilities making it easier to monitor whether on a PC or cell phone.

 

[chaz]

I guess it may be fun to know... but I can get pretty good idea between chemical usage and my eye witness viewing that I’m not about to over complicate. I’m really only interested in “on time”. ....I get that with my Hamilton DAN reporting.

Now a remote switch to turn on an overhead sprinkler for those (few) that think it’s ok to bring their own supplies including water to my wash...that I’d be interested in.

 

[OurTown]

Even though I'm not currently doing this, I'll share my thoughts. I would think the easiest way would be to use a PLC/PLC's with enough inputs to monitor and record "On Time". Some of the newer PLC's have networking capabilities making it easier to monitor whether on a PC or cell phone.

2Biz can you recommend one? It seems that when I looked into it before it was going to take a lot of additional modules therefore costing quite a bit of money and was not really very small. They seemed overkill for the small amount of work it was doing.

 

[chaz]

Why does this really matters?! I have a pretty good idea as to moat popular functions ...but I just can’t imagine spending money and time adding parts etc to measure time on each function.

 

[MudMoney]

Chaz

total agreement there !

 

[chaz]

....that said....my air shames did come with “hours” meters installed....I think in an effort to show pay back as it was a pricey addition to the bays.

 

[OurTown]

I think in an effort to show pay back

That is one of the reasons we would like to have it but the expense and time involved to buy it and custom program it seems excessive for what it is worth. It is a really simple idea and it seems like there would be a smaller, simpler and less expensive option. Our wash started off as having only 5 functions and is going to 11 eventually so it would be interesting (not necessary of course) to know the payback of the added functions. Also if later you decide to try something else and have to delete a function because you are out of room on the 12 position switch then you would know for sure which one to delete. If it comes to it we might just put hour meters on all added features like we did the Air Shammee and the foaming brush system.

 

[MEP001]

I don't concern myself much with the usage of the functions. If I was concerned that it might cost more to operate than it makes then I might, but you can't measure all of its effect. You may be bringing in customers just because you have in-bay dryers or trifoam conditioner, increasing your bottom line, but you don't know to subtract that from the extra amount spent on that function. Even with a foam conditioner you're getting more rinse time. Everything affects everything else.

 

[2Biz]

2Biz can you recommend one? It seems that when I looked into it before it was going to take a lot of additional modules therefore costing quite a bit of money and was not really very small. They seemed overkill for the small amount of work it was doing.

I am Partial to IDEC PLR/PLC's since they are the first ones I worked with. Same as Siemens, just 6 months behind in consumer technology and a little cheaper. Do a search for the IDEC FL1F and D/L the 326 page manual, down about 100 pages from the previous FL1E manual! There are function blocks in the ladder that allows for tracking and cumulative reports. You can also program multiple pages of the LCD screen to generate the output your looking for. The FL1F has capacity for 8 inputs and each expansion module has 4 inputs. Wolfautomation.com has the FL1F for $150, ExMod's is about $60....Not a Bank Breaker!

 

[Randy]

How are you guys doing this? Separate counters for each function? I have heard some people on here talk about adding usage meters to in bay blowers for instance. Anyone checking usage of every function? If so(or any function at all), what are you using to do so?

WHY? What are you going to do with this information? What purpose would it bring? I kind of think its useless information. We’ve been in the car wash business 35 years and we’ve never cared about how long a function has been used etc. I guess it might useful information to be brought up while sitting around the campfire with your mates drinking beer and you could bring up that your car wash functions did this or that last month, now that would be impressive.

 

[Robert2181]

My thoughts exactly. I can't see where it will save any amount of time,money or cut expenses and raise profits.

 

[mjwalsh]

I am Partial to IDEC PLR/PLC's since they are the first ones I worked with. Same as Siemens, just 6 months behind in consumer technology and a little cheaper. Do a search for the IDEC FL1F and D/L the 326 page manual, down about 100 pages from the previous FL1E manual! There are function blocks in the ladder that allows for tracking and cumulative reports. You can also program multiple pages of the LCD screen to generate the output your looking for. The FL1F has capacity for 8 inputs and each expansion module has 4 inputs. Wolfautomation.com has the FL1F for $150, ExMod's is about $60....Not a Bank Breaker!

2Biz & others,

We did something similar to that with our PLC driven 2 room dog wash. I had help with almost 100% of the PLC programming. It is reliable & does help to verify little things like a customer exaggerating the variance in water temp. I can look at the recent graph on the HMI touchscreen to show the variance more accurately. We have to pay sales tax on the dog wash vend items even though it is debited on the customers time ... it is better to just write down & record to a database the number of vends of each item off the screen & reset rather than physically counting the shelves dropped etc.

On another data logging system here ... back in the year 2000 when I had more young manpower to work with ... we comprehensively put in a bunch of Hall's effect & other sensors like the forum's William Spitzer suggested & used some Measurement Computing Visual Studio IO boards tied to a 24/7 computer with some software similar to Nat'l Instruments' LabView. It is still functional ... & still used by us but like ... Randy & others have suggested it does come down to how much gain for how much cost. After Nat'l Instruments bought out Measurement Computing the prices went "out of sight" So that includes long term cost also ... which always has to be passed on to our end user customer base ... which sometimes can be more fragile than we think ... along with uncertain weather.

Not sure ... if the latest & greatest IoT wireless is another option for logging function time but ... long term cost evaluation should always be part of the equation IMHO.

 

[Earl Weiss]

WHY? What are you going to do with this information? What purpose would it bring? I kind of think its useless information. ...

I could see if I had an X# selector switch and wanted to add something but that meant I would need to either delete something or pull new wires and maybe change doors and whatever I might want to delete least used function.