Who says a common water pump cannot be intelligent?

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Take a close look at the tube the man in the accompanying picture is dropping into the bore hole. Is it a rocket launcher? Is it a land mine? Is it a bomb? Hopefully not, because the world, not the least of all Indonesia, has seen enough destruction and suffering already.

Would you believe that the shiny tube is actually a compact water pump? And a smart one, at that.

It's hard to believe that a powerful and sophisticated pump could come in the form of a tube made of polished stainless steel. Honestly speaking, the tube is pretty enough to decorate your living room. Place it on top of the piano, and your guests will mistake it for a new type of musical instrument.

Submersible pumps, that is, pumps that can be dropped into the well and lowered under the water basin, are not new. But to think of dropping this handsome tube 100 meters below the earth certainly poses questions. How does it work? What will happen if water gets into the electric motor? How often do we have to pull it up to fix it?

No reason to worry, because it was made by Grundfos, a pump maker from Denmark. Although they manufacture around eight million pumps of various types and sizes every year, they may not be the biggest pump manufacturer in the world (in fact, people have told me that a Japanese company named Ebara is actually the largest). However, Grundfos certainly has a long tradition of craftsmanship. During my recent extremely short but quite eye- opening trip to this country of five million people, I had the opportunity to tour their factories.

The Pig

The history of Grundfos is just as interesting as the shiny tubular pump in the picture. Back in 1945, the small agricultural town Bjerringbro, situated in the middle of the Jutland moors in Denmark, had a population of 2,335 people. They wanted automatic water works. They needed water pumps, and in those days, obtaining pumps was not as easy as going to Glodok Jaya in Jakarta. At that time, a young man named Poul Due Jensen, who was in charge of the project, came up with this bright idea: Why not make the pumps himself?

So, equipped with his uncanny ability for solving problems, he designed a pump called FOSS 1. It was a piston pump, and with its short, thin legs it looked so much like a pig it was in fact named "The Pig". Poul's factory made fifty units of The Pig. I saw one of them in the company's museum.

After The Pig, two different types of pumps came out of Poul's factory: The deep water pump, which was called "Dybfoss", and the ground water pump called "Grundfoss". Both of them were piston pumps, which basically worked like the "dragon pumps" that people commonly use in Indonesia. But they were built so sturdily that they lasted more than 40 years.

Today, the company has adopted the name Grundfos (with only one `s'), and it has turned the small town Bjerringbro into a very modern industrial center. It makes pumps for various purposes, including heating, cooling, waste management, irrigation and residential uses.

The factories

It's easy to see why some of the machinery and tools required to manufacture the pumps are not available on the market. For that reason, Grundfos has its own division that designs and makes machinery and tools. To facilitate the design process, Catia, a heavy-duty CAD/CAM from IBM, is used here, and this division also makes tools for other manufacturers as well -- including manufacturers of fans.

Many of the pumps are also equipped with microelectronics. In fact, Grundfos has its own clean room where they make the chips used in the more versatile models. They build their own electric motors.

Working at Grundfos really seems like working in a family business. At the headquarters, various facilities are available that employees can use to pursue their personal hobbies, including car repairing. The guesthouse where I stayed had three bars, complete with karaoke and Internet access.

However, one of the most interesting things I came across was the "FlexiJob" arrangement that Grundfos has. The handicapped as well as those who cannot work full-time can still be productive in the factory, particularly in the section where they dismantle rejected pumps for recycling. Because of their physical conditions, the employees here may be able to work a few hours a day, yet they receive full salaries thanks to subsidies from the Danish government. "Today, about two percent of our employees work in the FlexiJob arrangement. We plan to increase it to three percent in four years," said Jens Overgaard, the man in charge of the FlexiJob division.

Enter the SQ

The new SQ Series, the highlight of the event to which PT Grundfos Indonesia had invited me, is really a marvel. Although the pump tube is only three inches in diameter, it is big enough to contain the rotor, the electrical motor, the electronic components -- including the microchip and the pump mechanism, as you can see in the accompanying picture. The outer tube is made from stainless plate that is welded using tungsten gas. The upper part is welded using laser-welding techniques. A test with helium is conducted to check for leaks, which could instantly damage the submersible pump.

The microchip inside the SQ pump enables it to continue operating despite fluctuations in voltage level. Unlike ordinary pumps, it also has a feature called "soft start". With this feature, there won't be any spike each time the motor is started. If your PC reboots each time the jet pump in your house starts -- causing a sudden sag in your house voltage -- you'll know how useful this particular feature is.

What if the water level down there becomes very low? Wouldn't the pump continue working and wearing itself out? Again, the microchip will detect if the pump is in the "dry running" condition, and it will automatically shut itself off. After some time, it will start again and shut off again immediately if there is still no water.

The pump mechanisms, which are mostly made of glass-reinforced composite materials and durable ceramic bearings can handle sands and other abrasive particles with no problems. The power cable assembly is waterproof, and the cable can be up to 100 meters long without connections or plugs.

The more versatile model, the SQE, has even more intelligent features. By using just the power cord, the microelectronics inside the pump can communicate with a control box. With a remote control that resembles a TV control, we can make adjustments to the rotation speed and the constant water pressure. If a problem is detected by the microelectronics inside the pump down below, the message will be sent up to the control box and we'll be notified. That's a very neat feature, because we neither hear nor see the pump.

So, what was the biggest lesson I learned from the trip to Bjerringbro? Was it the beautiful countryside that reminded me so much of my own childhood (too bad the flowers had not come out yet)? No, I learned that, thanks to microelectronics, even a simple thing like a water pump can be made "intelligent".