Schneider Electric Leeds: Ringmaster Production Line Virtual Factory Tour

Schneider Electric makes the Ringmaster range of ring main units at its factory in Leeds: medium-voltage switchgear used on electricity distribution networks in the UK and around the world. The line runs as a sequence of stations, from the casting of the epoxy resin mouldings that house the switchgear through assembly, gas filling and a series of tests to the despatch bay. The tour shows how a Ringmaster is built and tested, for anyone who cannot walk a live production floor.

We photographed the line in 360 in build order and designed one of our bespoke 360 virtual tours around it, in Schneider’s green and with its “Life Is On” branding. The tour has 14 stations, 31 points to explore and 6 quality gates, and it can run itself: press “Follow the build” and the tour walks the visitor down the line, station by station and point by point, with nothing to click. Below we walk through each feature and why it is there.

Three ways in

The welcome screen sets out what the tour is in one line, “Follow a Ringmaster ring main unit through the Leeds factory, from the first resin casting to the despatch bay”, with the three numbers that matter: 14 stations, 31 points to explore and 6 quality gates. Under it are three ways to start. Follow the build is the guided run described below. Explore at your own pace opens the factory floor and leaves the visitor to look around and open points themselves. Jump to a station opens the full list of stations, each with a photograph and a line on what happens there. Accessibility settings and a text version of the whole tour are on the same screen, before anything else loads.

Follow the build: a tour that runs itself

A production line has an order, and most visitors want to see it in that order without having to work out where to go next. Press “Follow the build” and the tour takes over: it opens station 00, turns to the first point and shows its description, moves on to the second point, then travels to the next station and does the same there, all the way to the despatch bay at station 12. A progress bar along the bottom shows how far through the current station the run is, and the build view ticks off each stage as it is reached.

The visitor can stop watching and start exploring at any moment. Pause holds the run where it is, Stop hands control back, and any point or station can be opened by hand in between. It means the tour can run on a screen in reception, on a stand at an exhibition or in a presentation, where nobody is there to drive it, as well as on a customer’s laptop. The same run is available from the keyboard with a single key.

14 stations in build order

The production line is the menu. A panel on the left lists every station in order, from 00 The factory floor and 01 Insulation cell to 12 Despatch, with the current station marked and the six quality gates carrying a shield. Each station has a numbered bar at the foot of the screen with its name, a one-line summary and next and previous buttons, so the tour follows a Ringmaster through the factory rather than presenting a set of rooms. Station 03, for example, is the rotating arc assembly, where the circuit breaker’s interrupter is built; station 04 is the main RMU line, where ring main units take shape.

31 points to explore

Each station has numbered hotspots in the scene, and each opens a panel written from Schneider’s own material: the epoxy resin process in the insulation cell, where heated resin and hardener are mixed to a pre-engineered ratio and the moulding is kept in house for quality control; the Kanban system on the RMU line; the 250kW of solar panels on the factory roof; and the lean manufacturing philosophy the factory runs on. Technical terms in the text are underlined and link straight to the glossary, so a visitor who does not know what SF6 or a ring main unit is can find out without leaving the point.

Six quality gates

Every Ringmaster is checked at six points before it leaves Leeds, and the tour makes those checks a feature in their own right. The Quality gates panel lists all six with a photograph and what is tested at each: inspection and coating in the finishing area, mechanical endurance testing of the mechanisms, leak testing before gas filling, the contact speed test, the HV and LV routine tests with a gas sniffer and protection scheme test, and the end-of-line final test and inspection. Choosing one takes the visitor straight to that station, where the station bar is marked as a quality gate.

The leak test at station 06 is a good example of the detail the points carry: the unit goes into a sealed chamber for an over-pressure test with nitrogen, then a leak test with helium, whose molecules are smaller than SF6 and so give a more searching test, before it is filled to its operating pressure.

Build view: the Ringmaster takes shape

A production line tour has a problem that a tour of a building does not: the product looks different at every station, and a visitor arriving at station 07 has no way to know what has already happened to the unit in front of them. The build view answers that. It is a diagram of a Ringmaster that builds up stage by stage as the visitor moves down the line, from the empty outline at the factory floor, through the moulding, the switch and breaker assemblies, the SF6 fill and the metal-clad housing, to the finished unit with its covers, cable box and roof. Under the diagram is the list of stages, ticked as they are passed. It can be opened at any station and it runs alongside Follow the build.

A glossary, in the tour

Switchgear has its own vocabulary. The glossary explains the terms a visitor meets on the line, from busbar and epoxy resin to the IP54 and IP65 ingress ratings, ENA TS 41-36, Kanban, partial discharge and SF6, in plain language, and it is searchable. Because terms in the points link to it, the glossary is a safety net rather than a reading list.

All stations at a glance

The All stations panel shows the whole line as a grid of photographs with a line on each, and is the quickest way to the part of the factory a visitor came to see. It is the same list the welcome screen’s “Jump to a station” opens.

Accessible from the start

The tour is built to be used by everyone. The accessibility panel offers three text sizes, a high contrast mode with solid panels and stronger outlines, larger hotspots that are easier to see and tap, and a reduce motion setting that removes camera moves and animated effects. There is a text version of the whole tour, station by station and point by point, with a link from each section into the matching 360 scene, and a “Skip to the text version” link is the first thing a screen reader meets. Everything is on the keyboard: arrow keys to look around, N and P for the next and previous station, 1 to 9 to open a point, B for the build view, F for Follow the build, G for the glossary, S for all stations and Esc to close whatever is open.

The end of the line

The tour finishes where the product does, in the despatch bay, with finished units on pallets going on to a lorry and a single point, “Ready to go”, for the customers around the world the units are sent to. Follow the build ends here too, with a Finish button in place of the next station.

Built for Schneider, editable by Schneider

Like all our bespoke tours, this one was designed from scratch for the client: the production line as the menu, the self-running Follow the build, the build view diagram and the quality gates are specific to a factory that makes one product in a fixed order, and they would not come out of a template. The tour is hosted by us with no yearly fee, and the CMS built into every bespoke tour lets Schneider’s team update the text of any point, swap a photograph or add a station when the line changes, without coming back to us.

If you make something on a line and want to show how it is made, from a factory floor to a test cell, talk to us about a bespoke factory tour. We photograph across the UK with no travel charges in mainland England, Scotland and Wales, and every tour is quoted on the plan.