Plastic injection molding for household appliances, central Poland
Automation concept: an autonomous cart at the bottleneck
A plant with over 200 people on three shifts. Its processes are injection molding, extrusion, thermoforming, assembly, packaging, quality control and packing. The facility has 20,000 m² and the warehouse 8,000 m².
over 100%
higher efficiency at the bottleneck
90 s + 98 s
work and waiting at the first operator
a few days
for the variant analysis
Task
Analyze the options to automate and robotize several stations on a line. The analysis covered technical feasibility and the OEE and productivity of the target automated line, with an economic analysis of each option.
Work
What was done
- Built a digital twin of the selected part of the plant, with material flows and the process times of each task.
- Selected the tasks with the greatest process, economic and ergonomic weight for automation.
- Prepared alternative automation scenarios.
- In the next iteration, added a simulation of automatic transport between stations.
- Prepared efficiency, productivity and working time reports for every variant.
Results
Results and benefits
Results
- The analysis found options to automate intralogistics, including non-ergonomic tasks, and quality control.
- The bottleneck was a manual process at the first operator: 90 seconds of work and 98 seconds of waiting.
- Replacing the operator with an autonomous cart raised efficiency by over 100% and set the conditions for the investment to pay off.
Benefits
- A variant analysis of the selected area in a few days.
- An informed operational and financial decision on automation.
- With the target transport concept ready, the company selected a technology provider on DBR77 Marketplace.
The facts and numbers come from the case study published on dbr77.com. Read the original
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