One of Germany’s leading automotive manufacturers uses various vision systems in its factories in order to continuously implement more efficient transport routes. With electromobility and environmental concerns transforming the automotive industry, improving resource efficiency in the use of raw materials and components plays a key role in manufacturing. Transport routes are continuously being improved and streamlined. To achieve this, the company decided to rely on the experience of ifm.
In the BIW assembly lines of automotive manufacturing plants, high material handling costs arise during production due to the supply of semi-finished products from the stamping facility to the production line. For example, approximately 4000 door panel components per day need to be transported by truck. The capacities of the trucks and the load carriers used to transport the doors have an influence on the number of required transport routes and thus directly on the logistics costs. Moreover, free space in the vicinity of the production lines is required for parts that need to be stored before being fed into the production line. This is why the capacity of each load carrier plays a role in keeping logistics overheads and storage space to a minimum.
The aim was to reduce material handling costs while at the same time maintaining production quality, and the goal was to have the load carrier transport twice as many door panel components. This would save 50% in material handling costs and 50% in storage costs. However, as the robot was not capable of safely unloading each panel piece by piece from the load carrier, an additional sensor system was necessary.
This is where ifm’s OPD100 came into play. With only a few pushes of a button, the sensor was set up quickly, and it safely detected when two panels instead of one had been placed upon one another.
Thanks to the OPD100 profile sensor, ifm has closed the gap between the simple and low-priced distance sensors and the complex and costly vision systems. The profile sensor is a true all-rounder and offers a solution for many quality control and position detection applications. This is a robust solution that also works reliably under extraneous light and with differently coloured objects. Objects can be flexibly positioned within the laser line, and the sensor can be set up within minutes, without additional software, thanks to its three pushbuttons. After being successfully tested in one facility, this application was immediately installed in other production systems.
A small investment has resulted in a substantial saving in costs. Some of the benefits are:
• The PMD Profiler reliably detects two panels placed upon one another.
• Reduced transport routes and storage costs.
• Resistance to extraneous light and easy to position.
• Easy setup in just a few minutes with no expert knowledge needed.
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