Harrandt goes Cobot.
With the use of collaborative robots, Harrandt stabilizes production processes, maintains quality standards and facilitates the work processes of the workers.
In order to better utilize the potential of employees and to optimize production processes, Harrandt relies on collaborative robots (cobots) for the intelligent loading and unloading of the pistons on series production lines. A technology that can be transferred to automated series production in almost any area.
Starting Point and Challenge
The series production of pistons presents manufacturers with many different challenges that affect quality, costs and safety. For example, employees are often responsible for multiple production lines simultaneously and have to equip them parallel with pistons and accessories. Another well-known problem: employees who check the quality of the pistons become tired after around 20 minutes and are no longer able to reliably identify defects. This means that it is necessary to use several employees alternately for the same task. Manual transport between the pallet and the machine also harbors risks, as it happens time and again that employees accidentally damage the highly sensitive pistons.
With the aim of employing qualified specialists in more demanding projects and increasing productivity, the monotonous machine assembly was to be automated through an intelligent Harrandt solution.
Our Solution
In order to save personnel resources, increase quality standards and better utilize production lines, Harrandt decided on a collaborative robot with an integrated palletizing system. The Cobot is used on a PLC-controlled stacking unit so that it can take over the entire loading and unloading of the machines. Combined with a camera system, it can also be used for quality inspection tasks which in turn ensure quality standards and also reduces personnel costs. The handling of the Cobot is very intuitive and does not require any special training from the manufacturer. Another advantage is that the movements of the Cobot slow down or stop as soon as a person enters the machine's safety area. By using special security scanners, production areas can be made much more open and at the same time safer.
The Cobot means up- and downstream processes are made much easier.
The Result
Thanks to the flexible and compact Cobot solution, employees can be deployed for more demanding tasks, production processes can be stabilized and downtimes reduced. This leads to a sustainable improvement in quality as well as an increase in efficiency. In this case the Cobot feeds pistons or completely different workpieces to the machines. With a minimum of effort, the entire unit can be moved to another machine line and start work within the shortest possible time - up to 24 hours a day and for almost every part being produced.