When the welder is missing
B&S Blech mit system: Cobot as welder
Best practice examples show how companies use cobots to secure their production in Germany, as B&S Blech did with System GmbH & Co, one of the leading service providers in sheet metal processing. The strategic realignment of production resulted in more welding duties, but the company from Lower Bavaria, which employs about 160 people, is facing new challenges. “Although we upgraded our manual welding workstations, we quickly reached our limits, both in terms of space and personnel,” said Managing Director Fabian Schremmer, describing the initial situation.
The new solution from longtime partner TRUMPF comes at the right time. The TruArc Weld 1000, the automatic arc welding cell in collaboration with the UR10e from Universal Robots and the welding source from Fronius, meets all the requirements for an automated welding solution. Investment is also manageable, and B&S is confident that the solution will provide reliable assistance for a capacity of nine manual welding stations. Currently, both cobots are used in two shifts and process components up to 2m in length. Every new order is now tested for robot suitability. The decisive factor for this is quantity, as cobots take over repetitive series production especially to relieve employees.
Siemens: 70 cobots to manufacture
Skilled worker shortages, increasing cost pressures and an increasingly digital world: Like many German manufacturing companies, Gerätewerk Erlangen (GWE) from Siemens has faced many challenges in recent years – and has consistently relied on automation to solve them.
“When we discussed the first considerations for automating factories in 2016, we were aware of only classic industrial robots. And they cannot be economically operated for production here with small to medium quantities,” explains Maximilian Metzner, Global Head of Autonomous Manufacturing Electronics at Siemens , looking back. Alternatives had to be found, and the Siemens factory, where AC drives are manufactured, found them in the Universal Robots collaborative robot. “They are compact, versatile and, most importantly, easy to use,” says Metzner. “But the biggest upside is the flexibility we gain from the fact that the technology is intuitive to program and use.”
Siemens now has around 70 collaborative robots from Universal Robots in action at the Erlangen factory
