RiPanel Processing Center

The RiPanel Processing Center from Rittal, in conjunction with EPLAN software, offers a seamless solution for the efficient management of production and machine orders. I joined the development team in February 2023 and have been actively contributing to the project's evolution and maintenance since then.

The Challenge

Rittal needed a comprehensive production management tool to optimize manufacturing processes, reduce throughput times, minimize errors, and cut costs. The solution needed to integrate with existing EPLAN software while providing robust job management and layout design capabilities for industrial control panel production.

The Solution

The RiPanel Processing Center comprises two primary modules:

• Layout Tool: Enables efficient design with an integrated library of 2D-modelled components from Rittal, extensible as required
• Job Management Module: Supports comprehensive management of production orders for registered Rittal machines

Technical Implementation

Since joining the team in February 2023, my responsibilities as a full-stack developer on this enterprise project have included:

• Developing and maintaining the backend using ASP.NET Core 8 WebAPI for both the JobManagement and Layout components
• Contributing to the Angular frontend implementation with responsive design and complex UI workflows
• Optimizing and maintaining Microsoft SQL Server database
• Working with RabbitMQ for reliable communication with manufacturing machines
• Creating comprehensive build pipelines for backend, frontend, performance tests, and e2e tests
• Implementing performance tests using Grafana/k6 to ensure system scalability
• Setting up the testing environment for QA engineers to implement end-to-end tests with Playwright
• Developing the integration testing environment using NUnit with TestServer
• Deploying and monitoring the application in Azure

Results

The RiPanel Processing Center is successfully delivering:

• Significant reduction in production throughput times
• Minimized manufacturing errors through automated validation
• Comprehensive process optimization for planning confidence
• Seamless integration with existing EPLAN software ecosystem
• Scalable architecture capable of handling enterprise workloads

Key Achievements

• Enhanced and maintained the existing backend architecture using ASP.NET Core 8
• Created comprehensive DevOps pipelines for continuous integration
• Established performance testing framework to ensure system scalability
• Implemented end-to-end and integration testing environments for quality assurance
• Planned, estimated and delivered many features that improved code quality and reduced development time

This project is consistently under active development, with ongoing enhancements and new features being added regularly.