UR cobots' unmatched flexibility future-proofs Swedish manufacturer

Leax Group

In short

LEAX Group, a Swedish contract manufacturer, often moves machinery within the factory in order to find the best flows. Sometimes entire flows are transported to other LEAX sites. So the automated solution the company was looking for had to be flexible, easy to program and with efficient use of space.

With the UR10 LEAX group now benefits from a genuinely flexible resource that can be moved around between their 11 factories according to need. To them the robotic arms are a long-term investment that future-proofs possible changes in the product portfolio.

The business transformation

“We manufacture everything from small annual volumes up to 100,000 units of a particular article per year. For us it is extremely important, as well as one of the company's strengths, that we are able to quickly execute orders for new products. We have very high requirements for how quickly we can start up a unit,” said Rickard Isaksson, Quality Manager at LEAX Group.

Leax group
Industry Automotive and Subcontractors,Metal and Machining
Country Europe
Number of Employees 1000+
Cobots used UR10

Video — UR10 robot, Leax Group, Sweden

The solution

LEAX Group decided to invest in three UR10 robot arms. They are used for changing bits within a shaving machine and for loading and unloading two gear-cutting machines by means of a three-fingered gripper.

Rickard Isaksson explains that the UR10s from Universal Robots are a long-term investment: “If we compare it to a normal machine then the payback time is 18 months, assuming that the operator runs two shifts. But it's far too narrow an outlook to simply calculate the payback time. Suppose that in three years we will stop manufacturing a certain product. Then we can use the UR10 again with new and other applications. If we had designed something specifically for a certain product, we would not be in the same position.”

"Suppose that in three years we stop manufacturing a certain product. Then we can use the UR10 again with new and other applications. If we had designed something specifically for a certain product, we would not be in the same position.”

Rickard Isaksson, Quality Manager