Industry:  Automotive

Technical capability:

Robotic integration
Inspection&Testing 
Heating application
AGV integration

Challenge:

The product process is to make two sound-proof carpet forming and stick together.Customer request this line is fully-automated process include: material handling, dispensing, heating,and forming. For the heating process, this line should configure with two different type of heating, which are hot wind type and infrared type. 2 shift per day, and request double the output. The process flow as following: carpet loading, heating process, then , forming and pressing process, then dispensing, finally forming and pressing again, the carpet is compounded with the main carpet. 

Solution:

Our team has analyze the cycle time for each process, to improve the product output need to split the function and cutoff the bottleneck process. We found out the forming and pressing process are the bottleneck process. Therefore, The system layout was design with two entrance of carpet loading position, two heating oven, one dispensing robot integrate with rotation table, three forming and pressing machine, and one six axis robot for carpet transportation.
As both carpet need the heating process, but in two different type of heating. Therefore, we design the layout with two different heating oven to heat the carpet. After heating process, the carpet will automatically transfer to the forming and pressing machine for the next process. After form and press process, the six axis will pickup the carpet from the machine to the dispensing station for dispensing process. After the dispensing process, the six axis robot will pick up the carpet back to the form and press machine, in the meanwhile the other heated carpet will move to the same station, and cover on the dispensed carpet. and start the forming and pressing process. Finally the end product will pickup by operator. The dispensing station has buffer rotation table can dispense product and deliver product at the same time. Time saving.

Results and benefits:

Before implement this line, the production was manual, and low efficiency.
As the carpet is heavy and huge, when manually operating the process are too intense for the worker, and low productivity. 
This line helps customer save 90% labor cost and labor working intensity. But most important is improve the output rate 50%+.