Efficient production is nothing new, and the expertise of all the professionals and the deployability of the machinery you work with are crucial. Standardising processes and activities helps you to keep the utilisation rate, or spindle hours, of your machine as high as possible. The added challenge for the machining industry is that of high-mix and low volume. How do I organise a large variety of products with a relatively small volume? This requires flexibility on the production floor. Nowadays, dealing with this flexibility is one of the core tasks of the professionals on the shop floor. Setting up new products, organising clamping devices and tools, loading machines with raw material, unloading and finishing products followed by measuring and validating these products.
Automation strategy on 4 levels
Taking on more work or running a more efficient operation immediately means a higher workload for staff. With a four-level automation strategy, each of these challenges can be addressed and your strength in the market can be increased. The Cellro roadmap for our customers helps step by step in an approach for achieving your automation strategy.
The first level consists of robotising product loading tasks at a machining centre. Deploying a robot with smart gripper technology can pick up and put back a variety of products. The robot grips the products from a fixture in the processing machine. This combination of machine, robot and storage is called a Cell. This is the unit responsible for optimising machine spindle times and replacing the operator’s loading tasks.
The second level consists of automating various tasks. Changing products or changing tools involves many actions that can be performed automatically. This automation revolves around smart software that can plan in advance which tasks (Jobs) are to be carried out. This makes it possible for your production environment to produce outside regular working hours. If everything has been properly prepared, you can produce in the evenings and at weekends without any worries.
Looking ahead is crucial for worry-free production and for being as efficient as possible. Are all the tools available for future tasks? Is the tool life long enough for the planned tasks? Has any unplanned downtime occurred? Are the products made according to quality standards and geometric requirements? Looking ahead requires data from all connected systems. Digitising this data processing and automatically linking actions to it leads to a highly optimised planning and availability of the machines.
The next step in efficiency is the integration of production cells into an automatic logistic process. Retrieving raw materials from a central warehouse and making them available to production cells ensures a continuous running process. A combination of central and decentralised storage can increase the availability of cells and keep costs under control. In addition, the logistics between production cells, measuring benches and other secondary process steps can be solved completely autonomously.
Choose an experienced partner
Cellro develops, manufactures and supplies CNC-Automation for the machining industry. Flexible solutions that grow with the production process of our customers is crucial. Every journey begins with the first step; a journey that we have successfully started with many customers worldwide. In our opinion, this journey is never finished. Close to our customers with local offices such as Brackenheim in Southern Germany, our team is at your service to build and roll out your automation roadmap.