Why Organizations Choose ATEK Over Emerson (Copeland)
Copeland excels at commercial refrigeration monitoring — equipment alarms, energy efficiency, and food safety for retail and food service operations worldwide. But when a pharmaceutical quality manager needs to monitor a cold storage unit for vaccine stability, or a biotech facility requires FDA 21 CFR Part 11-compliant environmental records with electronic signatures and audit trails, they quickly discover that ProAct was designed to monitor equipment, not to document regulatory compliance. That distinction is critical.
Understanding Emerson (Copeland)
Copeland became an independent company in May 2023 when Blackstone acquired a majority stake in Emerson Electric’s Climate Technologies division for $9.7 billion ($14 billion total valuation). In August 2024, Emerson sold its remaining interests in Copeland, making Copeland fully private and majority-owned by Blackstone.
With approximately 18,000 employees and $5 billion in fiscal 2022 revenue, Copeland is headquartered in Sidney, Ohio (named after refrigeration pioneer Edmund Copeland). The company manufactures compressors, controls, thermostats, valves, monitoring software, and solutions for commercial refrigeration, HVAC, and cold chain applications.
Copeland’s core product offerings include:
- ProAct Monitoring Services — Remote alarm processing for retail (supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies, commercial buildings, refrigerated storage) with 24/7 monitoring centers
- Site Supervisor — Facility control platform for C-stores, pharmacies, mixed retail, and commercial facilities
- ProAct Site Manager — Multi-site control, alarm history, temperature logging, and facility management
- ProAct Transport — Reefer container management for intermodal transport and cold chain logistics
- ProAct Connect — Enterprise management platform (2025 release) for integrated monitoring across equipment, facilities, and fleets
Copeland’s recognized strengths include:
- Commercial Refrigeration Leadership — Deep expertise in HVAC, compressors, and refrigeration equipment monitoring with ProAct services deployed across global retail, food service, and cold storage operations.
- ProAct Suite Ecosystem — Integrated family of tools (ProAct Monitoring, Site Supervisor, ProAct Site Manager, ProAct Connect) with tight integration into Copeland compressors and refrigeration equipment.
- Global Scale and Infrastructure — Blackstone backing combined with Emerson’s legacy provides extensive manufacturing capacity, global service networks, and remote alarm processing centers.
- Equipment Bundling Options — Ability to package monitoring with Copeland compressors, condensing units, and integrated refrigeration systems for large deployments.
Common Challenges with Emerson (Copeland)
Organizations evaluating or currently using Copeland ProAct for pharmaceutical or life sciences applications frequently encounter these limitations:
- Equipment monitoring vs. regulatory compliance — ProAct is designed to monitor refrigeration equipment (compressor status, temperature setpoints, alarm thresholds for supermarket cases) not to generate FDA 21 CFR Part 11-compliant regulatory records. Equipment alarms ≠ compliance documentation.
- No FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance — Copeland solutions lack native Part 11 compliance, electronic signatures, ALCOA+ audit trails, and automated IQ/OQ/PQ documentation that pharmaceutical auditors expect during FDA and Health Canada inspections.
- Equipment lock-in creates flexibility issues — ProAct monitoring often bundles with Copeland compressors and refrigeration equipment. Organizations with non-Copeland installations (Hussmann, Kysor/Warren, Technibel, etc.) have limited integration options and cannot leverage ProAct’s full suite without equipment replacement.
- Not validated for pharmaceutical cold chains — ProAct is validated and documented for commercial refrigeration and food safety, not for pharmaceutical cold storage, vaccine stability, or GxP-regulated environments. No Health Canada compliance, no PIPEDA data hosting documentation, no temperature excursion workflows designed for pharma.
- Separate support model from life sciences — Copeland’s support organization is structured around commercial refrigeration customers (convenience store managers, food service directors, retail operations teams). There is no dedicated life sciences compliance team that understands pharmaceutical regulatory requirements or has 5-minute response SLAs for excursion alerts.
How ATEK Addresses These Needs
Purpose-Built Compliance Platform: ProAct monitors equipment. ATEK monitors compliance. Every feature of ATEK — from FDA 21 CFR Part 11 audit trails to automatic excursion documentation — exists because a pharmaceutical quality manager needed it for regulatory compliance, not because a retail operations director needed better equipment efficiency. ProAct layers monitoring on top of refrigeration equipment; ATEK layers compliance on top of monitoring.
Equipment Independence: Whether your cold storage is Copeland, Hussmann, Kysor/Warren, Technibel, or a custom-built walk-in freezer, ATEK deploys the same way. No vendor lock-in to Copeland equipment, no forced equipment upgrades, no integration complexity with non-Copeland installations. Monitor any refrigerator, freezer, incubator, or environmental chamber with the same platform and the same support team.
Automated Life Sciences Compliance: Copeland’s ProAct requires manual compliance work — temperature logs must be extracted, reviewed, and compiled into compliance reports by pharmaceutical quality teams. ATEK automates this. Electronic signatures, immutable audit trails, automated IQ/OQ/PQ documentation, and one-click compliance reports are built-in — not retrofitted onto a commercial equipment monitoring system. Pharmaceutical auditors verify compliance by accessing your ATEK compliance dashboard, not by asking your quality team to hand over spreadsheets of ProAct data.
24/7 Compliance Expert Support: When ProAct alerts to a temperature excursion at a convenience store, the support response focuses on equipment diagnostics (compressor status, electrical issues, refrigerant levels). When ATEK alerts to an excursion in your vaccine storage at 2 AM, Montreal-based compliance specialists answer the phone in 5 minutes with guidance on regulatory notification, product assessment, and documentation requirements — not equipment repair.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Factor | Copeland ProAct | ATEK | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Commercial refrigeration equipment monitoring | Pharmaceutical/life sciences compliance monitoring | ATEK |
| FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance | Not included | Native, out of the box | ATEK |
| Electronic signatures | Not available | Built-in | ATEK |
| ALCOA+ audit trails | Not included | Native | ATEK |
| IQ/OQ/PQ documentation | Not available | Included | ATEK |
| Equipment agnostic | Limited (Copeland focus) | Works with any brand | ATEK |
| Calibration services | Separate vendor required | A2LA in-house included | ATEK |
| Support response time | Standard SLA (not guaranteed 5-min) | 5-minute guarantee, compliance team | ATEK |
| Bilingual support (EN/FR) | Limited availability | Native (Montreal-based) | ATEK |
| Canadian data hosting | US-based infrastructure | Canada-hosted (PIPEDA compliant) | ATEK |
| Pricing transparency | Custom quotes, enterprise sales | All-inclusive per-monitoring-point | ATEK |
Who Benefits Most from Switching
Organizations in these situations see the greatest impact when moving to ATEK:
- Pharmaceutical and biotech facilities with ProAct installations — If you installed ProAct to monitor cold storage for vaccine stability or pharmaceutical ingredients, you’re overcomplicating compliance. ATEK’s biotech and pharma solutions are purpose-built for exactly that use case with native FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance included.
- Multi-brand refrigeration environments — Organizations with Copeland alongside Hussmann, Kysor, or other equipment can unify monitoring on ATEK instead of managing separate ProAct, Hussmann, and third-party monitoring tools. One platform, one team, one 5-minute response guarantee.
- Quality teams tired of manual compliance work — If your quality team is manually extracting ProAct logs, building temperature reports, and compiling excursion documentation for FDA inspections, ATEK automates that entire workflow. Compliance reports are generated by the platform, not by humans, with every change tracked in an immutable audit trail.
- Health Canada and provincial regulatory focus — Copeland’s compliance documentation targets FDA and commercial food safety. ATEK’s team understands Health Canada requirements, PIPEDA data handling, and provincial healthcare regulations for Quebec, Ontario, and other Canadian facilities.
Making the Transition
Switching from Copeland ProAct to ATEK is straightforward and non-disruptive:
- Assessment — We evaluate your current ProAct installation, identify compliance-critical monitoring points, and map your pharmaceutical or biotech requirements (vaccine storage, cold chain, incubators, etc.) to ATEK’s solution templates.
- Parallel deployment — ATEK wireless sensors deploy alongside your existing ProAct monitoring during a validation period. Both systems run simultaneously; ProAct continues managing equipment operations while ATEK builds compliance records.
- Data migration and validation — Historical temperature data from ProAct can be reviewed; ATEK sensors begin collecting new data with full audit trails and electronic signature capability. Complete IQ/OQ/PQ documentation is included at no additional cost.
- Go-live and support — Transition compliance monitoring to ATEK while ProAct can remain operational for equipment monitoring if desired. Your quality team gains a dedicated compliance platform; 24/7 support with 5-minute response guarantee begins immediately.
When Emerson (Copeland) May Be the Right Fit
Copeland ProAct is appropriate for organizations whose primary need is commercial refrigeration equipment monitoring for retail, food service, or large cold storage operations. If your focus is supermarket energy efficiency, convenience store equipment alarms, or reefer container logistics (ProAct Transport), Copeland’s ecosystem and Blackstone backing make sense. Copeland is also appropriate for organizations that already use Copeland compressors and want integrated equipment + monitoring bundling, or those without regulatory compliance requirements beyond commercial food safety standards.
When ATEK Is the Better Choice
Choose ATEK when you need:
- FDA 21 CFR Part 11-compliant cold storage monitoring — Whether you’re storing vaccines, biologics, or pharmaceutical ingredients, ATEK provides native Part 11 compliance with electronic signatures, audit trails, and automated compliance documentation that ProAct does not offer.
- Equipment independence — You have non-Copeland refrigeration equipment or want to avoid vendor lock-in to a single equipment brand. ATEK works with any refrigerator, freezer, or incubator regardless of manufacturer.
- Automated compliance workflows — Your quality team should focus on product safety, not manual compliance data entry. ATEK automates temperature logging, excursion detection, and compliance report generation with full audit trails.
- Pharmaceutical and biotech-focused support — You need a team that understands Health Canada requirements, PIPEDA, provincial healthcare regulations, and GxP excursion response — not a commercial refrigeration support desk.
- All-inclusive pricing without equipment lock-in — Transparent per-monitoring-point pricing with calibration, validation, training, and 24/7 support included — no hidden integrator fees, no forced equipment upgrades, no surprise compliance costs.
Request a compliance monitoring assessment to see how ATEK can replace or augment your ProAct installation with pharmaceutical-grade compliance monitoring.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does ATEK replace our Copeland compressors or refrigeration equipment?
No. ATEK is a monitoring and compliance platform, not a refrigeration system. ATEK sensors deploy alongside your existing Copeland (or any other brand) refrigeration equipment, adding compliance monitoring and regulatory documentation on top of your current setup. You keep your equipment; ATEK handles compliance monitoring and FDA documentation.
Can ATEK integrate with ProAct to avoid ripping out our current system?
ProAct is designed for equipment monitoring integration (compressor status, alarms, setpoints). ATEK’s compliance monitoring operates independently via its own wireless sensors. If you want to view both ProAct equipment alerts and ATEK compliance data on a single dashboard, we can configure cloud integrations (API-based data sharing). However, ATEK does not require ProAct to be operational — it functions as a standalone compliance platform.
Is ATEK FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliant like ProAct claims to be?
Copeland ProAct is not inherently FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliant. Part 11 requires electronic signatures, audit trails, and immutable data records — features that are foundational to ATEK but not to ProAct. ATEK’s platform provides native Part 11 compliance including electronic signatures, ALCOA+ audit trails, and automated IQ/OQ/PQ validation documentation included at no additional cost. ProAct is designed for equipment monitoring; ATEK is designed for regulatory compliance.
How does ATEK handle temperature data if we also use ProAct?
ATEK collects independent temperature and environmental data from its own wireless sensors deployed in your facility. This data is stored in ATEK’s Canada-hosted, PIPEDA-compliant cloud with full audit trail and electronic signature capability. ProAct continues to monitor and log data from Copeland equipment. The two systems do not interfere; they operate in parallel. Your quality team uses ATEK for compliance reporting; your operations team uses ProAct for equipment management.
What happens if we want to replace our Copeland equipment in the future?
ATEK is equipment agnostic, so you can replace your Copeland compressors, freezers, or cold storage units with any other manufacturer without affecting your ATEK monitoring. Your compliance records, audit trails, and sensor calibration continue uninterrupted. ProAct would require a new subscription if you switch equipment brands; ATEK remains constant across equipment lifecycle.
How long does it take to migrate from ProAct to ATEK?
ATEK’s cloud-native wireless sensors typically deploy in days without equipment modification or complex integration projects. Unlike ProAct, which may require Copeland technician involvement for equipment integration, ATEK installs independently. We include validation documentation and compliance testing in the deployment window, so your quality team can begin relying on ATEK records for FDA and Health Canada compliance immediately.
Does ATEK support bilingual French/English like Copeland claims?
Yes. ATEK’s team is Montreal-based with native French and English support. Copeland’s support is available through US-based centers with limited French availability. ATEK’s 24/7 bilingual team understands Quebec regulatory requirements, provincial healthcare standards, and French-language compliance documentation — all available with your same 5-minute response guarantee.
Start with a free compliance assessment to see how ATEK can enhance or replace your Copeland ProAct monitoring for pharmaceutical and life sciences applications.