Practising what we preach to gain a six fold increase in productivity

Dec. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- ABB Ede is a manufacturing facility in the Netherlands. Ede is the name of the town, which is situated halfway between the cities of Arnhem and Utrecht. ABB Ede is part of ABB Automation Products but was free to purchase any robot that would provide the optimum solution to its manufacturing problems. The business relationship with ABB Robotics is therefore one of supplier and customer and nothing is taken for granted. The company markets a wide range of electrical junction boxes, which are produced using injection moulding machines.

One of their products is a sealed unit that is mounted inside ceilings and incorporates two threaded studs that allow a lamp to be attached. In order to carry the weight these metallic inserts must be either firmly attached or be an integral part of the junction box. This attachment process was originally done manually. Junction boxes were transported to an external workshop, the studs were inserted and then the box went into a press that deformed the base of the studs in order to hold them in position. Finished products were then transported back to the ABB factory. This was a time-consuming process, output was constrained, and very many kilometres were travelled in the process.

Moving production process in house
When a new version of this model was being designed, the company decided to investigate keeping the whole process in house, thereby removing the production constraint and reducing the impact on the environment. Using a robot to insert the studs into the mould and making them an integral part of the finished product was not something that the company had done before and the process had to be up and running in under nine weeks in order to achieve the deliver times required. “The combination of a brand-new application and a tight deadline was a significant challenge,” says ABB Ede project engineer René Wienholts. “At the beginning of 2007 we had commissioned ABB Robotics Partner, Rokoma, to deliver a turnkey, 6-axis solution for a packaging application that went well, so we engaged the same systems integrator. The solution was delivered on time. We are now running the insert application round the clock and producing about 3,000 junction boxes a day. If we had continued with the manual process the equivalent figure would be 500 a day.”

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About ABB
ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 175,000 people.

About ABB Robotics
ABB Robotics (www.abb.com/robotics) is a leading supplier of industrial robots – also providing robot software, peripheral equipment, modular manufacturing cells and service for tasks such as welding, handling, assembly, painting and finishing, picking, packing, palletizing and machine tending. Key markets include automotive, plastics, metal fabrication, foundry, electronics, pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries. A strong customer focus helps manufacturers improve productivity, product quality and worker safety. ABB has installed more than 175,000 robots worldwide.