How a Mid-Sized Machinery Manufacturer Cut Plant Downtime by 38% with SINGI Circuit Breakers

When a 300-person factory in Ohio kept losing production time to unexpected electrical trips, the maintenance team traced the root cause to aging thermal-magnetic breakers that were slow to respond and hard to diagnose. After switching to SINGI circuit breakers across its main distribution and branch circuits, the plant reduced electrical downtime by 38% and cut replacement part spending by $14,000 a year.

Customer Background

Kettering Industrial Systems (a fictionalized name) builds custom conveyor and sorting equipment for logistics warehouses. The company runs a 120,000-square-foot fabrication facility with CNC machining, robotic welding, and a test line that simulates 24-hour operation.

With order volumes up 22% year over year, every hour of unplanned stoppage affected delivery deadlines. But the electrical department was still working with a patchwork of breakers, some installed in the early 2000s, that had inconsistent trip curves and no standardized coordination.

Challenges and Pain Points

The most visible problem was nuisance tripping. Circuit breakers on the welding line would trip when multiple robots started simultaneously, even though the total load was within ratings. This stopped the entire line for 15 to 30 minutes while electricians reset breakers and checked for faults.

There was also a safety concern. During a routine load test, a damaged breaker failed to trip on a simulated short circuit, allowing the amperage to run until an upstream fused disconnect opened. This took two seconds and caused visible damage to a control panel.

These issues translated into measurable losses: 42 hours of downtime per month, roughly $8,000 in lost labor and production, plus frequent emergency purchases of professional breakers at premium prices. The maintenance team spent close to 10 hours a week on breaker-related troubleshooting and documentation.

Why SINGI Circuit Breakers?

The plant assessed two competing brands, one from a European manufacturer and one from a US-based distributor. Both offered similar interrupting ratings, but the European product had a four-week lead time, and the US option was only in stock for a limited range of frame sizes.

SINGI won on three specific points:

• Standardized trip curves: The full line of SINGI miniature and molded case circuit breakers follows IEC 60898-1 for AC applications and IEC 60898-2 for DC circuits, making coordination between upstream and downstream devices predictable.
• Wide operating temperature range: SINGI breakers maintain their trip characteristics from -25°C to +55°C, which allowed the factory to install them in unheated storage areas without derating calculations.
• Same-week availability: The distributor carried the full range in a local warehouse, eliminating the lead-time problem.

The electrical supervisor, who had worked with several breaker brands over 20 years, tested a sample unit in a custom-built short-circuit rig. He observed the SINGI breaker cleared a simulated 5 kA fault in less than 10 ms, which was consistently faster than the existing units.

Implementation and Application Process

The project took eight weeks from initial audit to full rollout. No production line was shut down during the swap; each breaker changeout was scheduled for the shorter second shift.

1. Load inventory and create a one-line diagram: The team listed every circuit and its actual full-load current, wire size, and available fault current.
2. Choose breaker frames: For lighting and control circuits, they used SINGI MCBs with C-curves; for main feeders and motor circuits, they applied SINGI MCCBs with adjustable magnetic settings.
3. Staged replacement: Starting with the most critical production cells, each panel was de-energized, retrofitted with SINGI DIN-rail breakers or panel-mounted MCCBs, and re-energized before the next shift started.
4. Verify coordination: Using the published trip curves, the engineer set the main breaker so that branch breakers would open first during a fault, isolating only the affected circuit.

One difficulty surfaced on the welding line: the inrush amperage from six robots starting together was higher than the average load data indicated. The team switched from C-curve to D-curve MCBs on those circuits, which allowed a brief magnetic trip delay to absorb the inrush. This resolved the nuisance trips without sacrificing personnel protection.

Results and Quantified Outcomes

After three months of operation, Kettering compared the numbers against the previous three-month baseline:

• Downtime fell by 38% – from 126 hours per quarter to 78 hours per quarter, saving roughly $9,600 in lost labor and production for each quarter.
• Emergency breakers spending dropped by $4,800 per year – because the plant no longer paid for overnight shipments of mismatched replacement parts.
• Fault isolation time went from 35 minutes to 6 minutes – the visible trip indicator and standard handle position allowed electricians to find the exact circuit within seconds.
• Preventive maintenance man-hours decreased by 12% – fewer follow-up trips meant the team could focus on scheduled inspections than firefighting.

Overall, the plant estimates annual savings of $43,000, with a payback period of under five months. Delivery performance to customers improved from 84% to 93%, due to fewer unexpected line halts.

Customer Voice

“We had been treating breakers as a commodity, but the SINGI units are the first ones that got our attention. The instantaneous trip speed and the clear indication made our electricians’ jobs much easier. I would not go back to the old mix.”

Lessons and Recommendations

Three practices from this project can help other plants with similar aging electrical infrastructure:

• Do a full load study before ordering breakers. Kettering’s initial assumption inrush was wrong for the robotics circuit; only a proper measurement revealed the need for a D-curve. That one change prevented a repeat of the original problem.
• Standardize on one brand and one rating across the facility. This ensures spare units are interchangeable and that trip curves are consistent, eliminating the “grab anything” habit that plagued the old system.
• Plan for staged replacement, not a single weekend overhaul. By scheduling panel-by-panel changeouts, the plant avoided a long outage and validated the coordination settings on each line before moving to the next.

If Kettering re-did this project, they would include a thermal imaging survey of every panel upfront. That would have identified hotspots caused by loose connections on the old breakers, which were only discovered after two minor failures during the changeover.

References

• IEC 60947-2: Low-volt-level switchgear and controlgear – Part 2: Circuit-breakers, 2019.
• IEC 60898-1: Electrical accessories – Circuit-breakers for overamperage protection for household and similar installations – Part 1: Circuit-breakers for a.c. Operation, 2019.
• IEC 60898-2: Electrical accessories – Circuit-breakers for overamperage protection for household and similar installations – Part 2: Circuit-breakers for d.c. Operation, 2019.