Optimised Production Processes with Collaborative Robots.

The Challenge

The automotive industry faces unprecedented competitive pressure. Parts need to be manufactured to an extremely high standard – at very low prices.

Böco Böddecker specialises in closure, locking and latching systems for the automotive industry. These plastic and metal parts are used to secure doors and seating in automobiles from a wide range of manufacturers.

The challenge was to increase efficiency by identifying repetitive tasks and seeing if they were candidates for automation.

The Solution

UR had a simple but effective solution: a lightweight collaborative robot from the Danish manufacturer Universal Robots. The 6-axis robot arm has a five kg lifting capacity and weighs only 18 kg. and has a working radius of 85 cm – requiring very little space on the production floor.

The automotive industry requires that each part be individually marked with a code. There were massive cost savings connected to automating this relatively simple, repetitive task. The UR robot can mark and label items to the strict requirements while doing quality control checks.

Now that the task is automated, accuracy and speed have increased, and the chances of sending a wrong product to a customer have been significantly reduced.

It was extremely important for Böco Böddecker that the solution could easily be integrated into the existing system. Large industrial robots take up too much space, which would increase the distance between critical stages of production, increasing the production time.

The robot also identifies and discards faulty parts by using an advanced camera control system. The camera can objectively determine the quality of the part – further adding to the overall efficiency of the solution.

• Relieved employees of repetitive tasks.
• Increases precision of the production operation.
• Reduces the likelihood of faulty parts being sent to customers.

To find out more about Universal Robots cobots, visit our UR Cobot page.