The client received a ready-made station meeting all the criteria specified in the letter of inquiry. The Plug&Play station cooperates with a human while ensuring the necessary safety standards. The work that was previously carried out by the operators was replaced, among others, by robots and an automatic bolting system. The manufacturing cycle time of the finished element is 5.1 sec, which is 15% better than the client expected.

The design of the station was created from scratch, i.e. the station is a prototype and does not refer to any another solution. During designing, the engineers had to take into account all the problems and limitations resulting from assembling very small plastic elements. An additional difficulty in the design was the wire, which is also a part of the P3 element. The folding process was finally completed with: 3 KUKA robots, Weiss indexing table, Stoeger screw feeding system, Atlas Copco automatic screw gun and AFAG vibratory feeders. The workstation of the operator who works with our station has been ergonomically designed to meet the strict requirements within the production plant.

The control and visualization system is based on Siemens and uses the unified Siemens programming and visualization standard, so the visualization refers to a common standard and is understandable for new operators working at the station. The visualization is realized on a 22" operator panel thanks to which it is legible and it facilitates diagnostics of the station. The software standard has been prepared in TIA Portal and it cooperates with the client's software standard in this facility. The use of the Profinet network with the Safety standard allowed to design the safety system in a way that follows the latest standards of electrical installations to maximally enable the diagnostics of problems.

Additionally, the station was designed with the possibility of connecting to the APA Nazca’s production data collection system. The station meets the Industry 4.0 requirements and allows to collect production data and data from energy and air consumption meters.

Benefits

• Reduction of the production cycle time of 1 product piece from 6 sec to 5.1 sec, improvement of 15% compared to the project assumptions
• 12% improvement in NOK
• Possibility to replace 4 workstations with one, possible relocation of employees to other production areas in the plant