Gern Glas

01 the short story

Gern Glas is one of Scandinavia’s largest suppliers of plane glass and mirrors for the furniture, kitchen, building and solar industries. To secure the position as a competitive manufacturer robot technology was implemented on the production line. As a result, the high energy using glass tempering process has been optimised and workers have been relieved from some of the monotonous tasks.

02 the challenge

If suppliers in other countries can do something slightly cheaper, there is a risk that high-volume orders go abroad. This is a fact, too, for Danish pane glass and mirror manufacturer Gern Glas. In order to make the best possible use of capacity and stay competitive the company decided to invest in robot technology. 

03 the solution 

The UR5 and the UR10 turned out to be the optimum robotic combination for Gern Glas who was also concerned about the monotonous tasks that their employees were exposed to every day.

Universal Robots’ technology offered not only a much more effective way to load smaller pieces of glass onto the conveyor belt for the high energy burning tempering process. It also helped limit the one-sided work of feeding pieces into the machine.

“The UR5 now places relatively small pieces of glass on the conveyor in an extra row alongside the other pieces. That way, we can temper much more glass for the same electricity. And the robot is happy working on monotonous jobs”, says Glenn Larsen, technical manager at Gern Glas who is very satisfied with the way the robotic arm helps to make far better use of the capacity and avoid bottleneck issues.

In addition to the UR5 that feeds the glass onto the conveyor belt the process line is equipped with a UR10 for sandblasting and an additional UR5 for gluing. Particularly the flexibility and the user-friendliness of the robots have impressed Gern Glas.