Sensing market change and adapting to it

One of our customers, who’s a leading supplier in sensors and controls worldwide, wanted to achieve this. They came to us to develop a flexible production line, that increased production volume and enabled fast product changes. The production line also had to make it possible to spread the investment over the number of product types, so they could break it up into smaller pieces. A challenge with lots of factors that make an impact.

Improving product quality and reducing risk

As the pressure sensors and controls market grows, the desire for higher production capacity grows along. For a new and custom solution, our customer wished to improve the product quality and minimize the chance of production errors. One of the ways to achieve this, was by reducing operator handling time. Additionally, the customer wished to reduce the investment per product type. The production line should be easy to maintain and service.

Initially, the customer requested a duplicate of the existing machines. These machines are based on turntables. Our engineers visited the site and noticed the potential for much better results with one integrated, modular production line.

A good overview of existing production

The first step in this project was to examine and analyze the earlier production line. This line consisted of two turntables. These turntables complicated a capacity increase of the production of another type of small sensors on the same machine.

We decided to propose a modular production line with added, interchangeable process modules. This makes it relatively easy to add or remove production processes. You can shuffle around with the production steps. And even better, it facilitates higher production volumes and a change of product to be manufactured.

For example: when a product type requires an additional process step, the new production line fulfills in this. Because of its independent control system, process modules can be tested and adjusted offline. Linking and integrating process modules can now be done in less than half a day.

Changing to different product types should be as easy as possible. We looked at possibilities to improve the product carrier. We designed the tooling of this carrier in a way that the operator can easily change the product type. Best of all: this can be done during a production run.

All of this takes place according to the Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) methodology. To make this even easier, our customer can keep using the tooling that is used in the present machinery.

Integrated processes for fast carrier exchange

Another important process presented itself with another challenge. This process restricted the total number of products that could be handled. We designed a custom fast carrier exchange module for this process. An additional carrier can be processed very quickly after the previous carrier has been processed. This solution speeds up the entire process, shortens cycle times and increases production capacity.

An overview of the high precision production processes that are integrated on this line are:

• Cleaning;
• Assembly;
• Crimping;
• Data Tracking: each carrier has its own unique RFID tag;
• Vision check: presence, color, size, position (in one frame);
• Auto-unloading of bad parts.

Adaptability and smaller investments

After the installation of our modular, flexible production line, the customer has experienced the following key benefits:

• Increased production capacity;
• Labor costs savings by requiring two instead of three operators;
• Increased serviceability through easy access to the machine and process modules, and offline debugging;
• Adaptability to the most useful layout (line, L-shape, U-shape);
• Minimum investment product type changes thanks to a plug-and-play platform.

Complex manufacturing challenges?

Do you have complex manufacturing processes that could be improved by precision automation? Our experts are actively thinking along with you to enhance your production processes.