spark360 Behind The Scenes: Vector Systems

The Vector Systems headquarters in McKinney, Texas, just north of Dallas, measures 36,000 square feet. 28,000 square feet of that is devoted to manufacturing, and when you’re standing in that cavernous facility, surrounded by massive domes of iron and steel that will soon be used to handle thousands of gallons of pressurized chemicals, you’re thinking the building is quite big enough to handle the job.

But Vector’s director of operations Dustin Davinia points across the street from the headquarters to an open field and tells me that’s where the company is eventually headed with its expansion plans.

It may be needed soon. Davinia and other executives interviewed for the story have their own process control plan for their process control systems company: convince other industries besides those currently being served by Vector that the company can also make solutions for their needs as well. Davinia was a great tour guide for the spark360 crew, so our thanks to him and his employees for allowing us to disrupt their workday by sticking cameras and microphones close to all that welding and hammering.

I didn’t know a lot about process control before doing my homework on Vector Systems. But even if I hadn’t read up on the industry segment, Davinia, vice president Ken Smith and president/founder Brian Ovens were very good teachers. They described the various functions for their skidded assemblies – stainless steel modules that can be “skidded” easily into place inside a facility and hooked up to the existing pipes and infrastructure so it can monitor, measure and meter whatever fluid or gas is being handled.

Davinia also took us inside the area where programmable logic controls, electrical control panels and other industrial control equipment are put together. I was struck by the mix of heavy-metal manufacturing – the traditional picture of flying sparks, workers in hardhats and goggles handling steel and iron – and state-of-the-art motherboard and circuitry associated with computers.

It was like looking at the past, present and future of manufacturing – all at once.

- Renay San Miguel