Enhancing productivity to sustain manufacturing
BW Industrie
In short
BW Industrie is a company specializing in industrial degreasing and machining of mechanical parts. For the past eight years, the company has used Universal Robots’ cobots to improve several of its manufacturing processes.
Four robotic arms from Universal Robots (one UR5, two UR10 and one model of the new UR16e) are deployed on production lines. The cobots handle tasks such as loading and unloading of CNC lathes, quality control of metallic tubes and deburring of metal parts ranging from 4 to 14 kg.
The business transformation
Using cobots from Universal Robots enables BW Industrie to maintain competitiveness and increase its workforce by 50% and revenues by 70%. The company has also been able to reduce the risk of muscoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among employees, ensuring a healthier working environment.
BW Industrie is an industrial SME located in Moselle, in the Eastern part of France. Eight years ago, the company was facing increasing competition. In order to save itself from relocation, BWIndustrie decided to embrace automation. The company first deployed traditional industrial robots requiring safety caging but wanted the operators to have access to the robots during production. The company was looking for a collaborative robotic solution that was intuitive and simple to implement. With an easy-to-use cobot, operators could be trained quickly and take care of day-to-day maintenance. In this context, BW Industrie acquired its first UR5 cobot.
Subsequently, with the expansion of the Universal Robots product line of cobots, BW Industrie deployed two UR10 cobots and developed machining cells for different applications. In order to meet customer demands for deburring of heavy metal parts, BW Industrie became the first company worldwide to integrate the UR16e cobot from Universal Robots.
BW Industrie
Automation challenges solved:
Improvement of team performance Reduction of load carrying Palletizing packages of different weights and sizes Reduction of employees’ musculoskeletal disorder
Key value drivers:
Easy programming Intuitive user interface to reduce training time End-Of-Arm-Tooling easy to change for fast change-overs Small footprint
Tasks solved by collaborative robots:
Palletizing
How they did it
In 2011, BWIndustrie contacts Sysaxes, a distributor of Universal Robots, to assist with the integration of its first UR5 cobot. The goal was to replace an obsolete traditional robot installed in 2008, that was in charge of handling light parts. Following the success of this first operation, the company decided to invest in three other UR cobots, carrying out CNC machine tending, deburring and quality inspection.
Safe operation
Collaborative robots installed at the end of the line work perfectly and greatly facilitate the loading and unloading of pallets; a task that is certainly necessary, but not very rewarding and exhausting for those who normally perform it. The application offers the possibility to change the pallets next to the palletizing robot in safe operation.
According to Sébastien Pain, Head of the Packaging Workshop at Sanofi Tours, the integration of these robots has brought "ergonomic benefits in terms of load carrying, travel, but also a reduction in terms of working time on the line for operators. " Indeed, on this line, Sanofi has gone from an organization of two operators per line to three operators for two lines. With the cobot, the reduction in working time on the task is estimated at 10% per day.
Laurent Wagner, CEO of BWIndustrie,Since our first cobot installation in 2011, our workforce has increased by 50%, and our revenues by more than 70%.
“Cobot Discovery Days”
More importantly, collaborative robots have convinced employees, an essential condition for the success of a cobot project. "To implement a project like this in France, you need to involve both the Health Safety and Environment (HSE) department and users at the very early stage of the project," says Gilles Marsal. "During the first steps, we organized Cobot Discovery Days where all the operators of the packaging lines, and supervisors and members of the management committee could come and test the cobots.”
All these steps (risk analysis, Discovery Day...) meant that the implementation of the first project took six months. The next installation took four-five months between order and implementation. One of the strengths of cobotics was a shorter installation than for industrial robotic arms.
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