Who says a common water pump cannot be intelligent?

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".