Material Handling
Assembly Line
Autonomous Transport Vehicle Revolutionizes BMW Plant
BMW Group Plant Regensburg has implemented an autonomous transport vehicle, enhancing digitalization and automation in its manufacturing processes. This innovation is a significant stride towards the intelligently connected BMW iFACTORY, with the driverless platform truck autonomously transporting press tools and steel blanks, boasting a payload capacity of up to 55 tonnes. The vehicle’s navigation, facilitated by state-of-the-art sensor technology, ensures precise and autonomous movement within the production facilities, operating at four kilometers per hour.
Industry must tackle its first-lift/last-lift manual handling blind spot
For example, an injection mould, press or progression tooling, welding, drilling and boring jigs, heavy batteries and gearboxes or CNC tooling will often be heavier than the recommended maximum manual lifting weight of 25kg or 55lb. Moving this sort of equipment around a facility will typically require lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing and pulling by either an employee or by equipment such as a forklift.
What is required is a low-cost, easily installed solution for this first-lift and last-lift problem. The answer may lie in the use of omnidirectional ball transfer units, expertly designed to facilitate the movement of tools and other equipment around a storage facility and onto a transporter. They can be installed in existing racking and require neither power nor software, making them quick to implement.
Get it Done with Automated Tote Assembly
Automation in metal fabrication continues to become more mobile
Think about an automated precision sheet metal operation, one with all the technological bells and whistles at every manufacturing step. A flexible manufacturing system brings sheet from a live-inventory tower system to a laser cutting bed. Blanks are cut, sorted, and stacked automatically with part removal automation, then brought to a robotic press brake with automated tool changes and a robot with an ultraflexible gripper that’s able to handle a range of workpieces.
As part of analyzing the process, think about the judgments and decisions the operation requires. Consider a mobile robot with an arm that moves blanks to a conveyor or other processes downstream. When presented with a pallet of four stacks, which stack does the robot take from first, when, and at what pace and sequence? Are integrated solutions needed to handle or prevent unexpected or rare events, like an air knife or other device to prevent double picking of blanks? Will the mobile robot need to navigate around different obstacles?
Using simulation technologies to craft material handling in a facility
Gigafactories Help Battery Manufacturers Meet Growing EV Demand
Independent cart conveyance systems rely on linear motor technology. Linear synchronous motors (LSM) use electromagnetic force to index carriers more quickly and efficiently than traditional conveyance systems. Linear motors use components that don’t wear or come into contact with one another, which drastically reduces maintenance needs and decreases downtime.
The system’s capabilities range from individual cell sorting to full battery module and pack assembly, while also performing required testing. The machine incorporates linear servo motors that position loads in precisely the correct direction at high speeds. And changeovers simply involve selecting the correct mode from the operator interface.
Free from the constraints of a traditional conveyor, this system can improve your operations by helping you create faster, more flexible battery lines using independent, programmable movers. Time to market is improved by new LSM technology thanks to built-in full-line simulation capabilities that include an integrated track-and-trace system that eliminates the need for external sensing.
MiR robots improve productivity at Faurecia
What is Indirect Material Optimization, and How Can It Turbocharge Your Supply Chain?
The problem of poor indirect material management stems partly from the inability of legacy and manual data management systems to quantify and measure indirect materials. These systems focus on the movement of trackable, direct materials but often ignore the indirect materials that are not utilized in the finished product.
This problem is further compounded by the fact that some organizations may not have internal controls in place to categorize and attach value to indirect spending. There might also be a lack of employee education about how and why indirect materials must be managed.
Industry analysts estimate that US manufacturers could save over $5 trillion annually just by optimizing their indirect material management processes.
An App for Bulk Material Handling and Analysis in Cement Manufacturing
Cement analyzers provide real-time online elemental analysis of an entire raw material process stream using technologies like Prompt Gamma Neutron Activation Analysis (PGNAA) and Pulsed Fast Thermal Neutron Activation (PFTNA) technology. These analyzers can aid in consistent stockpile quality, reduced chemistry variability, decreased kiln upsets and kiln fuel costs, extended quarry life, and minimized use of highest cost materials.
Smart conveyors streamline wet wipes packaging challenges
Wet wipe manufacturing automation can produce up to 500 stacks of wipes per minute, in counts ranging from 20 to 100 single-ply sheets per stack. At these high throughput levels, downstream systems for primary and secondary packaging like shrink wrappers and case packers cannot handle the volume of product flow unless it is split into multiple packaging machinery lines.
No matter how efficient shrink wrappers, labelers and case packers may be, if the wet wipes packaging line does not use conveyors adequately designed for the handling of fragile products like wet wipes, and precisely stage these products for infeed, the product quality, throughput speed and cost-efficiency of the entire production and packaging line will be compromised.