May 2024 Volume 6

AUTOMATION

3. Lower costs by reducing labor and scrap. 4. Create standard solutions that could be scaled quickly across various units. The Beginning The company sent some of its managers to attend an Automation 101 seminar (2018) provided by the FIA. They reached out to discuss the automation plan in more detail which led to a site survey. We worked together to understand automation opportunities and ranked them based on technology requirements, risk, and cost. Just as importantly, we met with senior management and prepared them for the “real world” once automation reached their door. Items we considered include: 1. Open communication to the plant floor. Make sure your team knows the plan. 2. In plant support for the automation. 3. Training requirements for the key guys (robot heroes). 4. Maintenance requirements for the new equipment. 5. Shift support. Who answers the call if there is an issue? 6. Who owns the task of adding a new part number? We did a deep-dive on the present production: • We identified part families with volumes by part number and billet sizes. • We identified lot sizes and changeover requirements (frequency, time to changeover). • We discussed back-up requirements for each unit.

The Plan All of this led to “the plan” which included: • Unit by unit rationalization of the part families to be automated. Some parts were moved to a special unit. • We created a staffing plan which included new job descriptions for the support team. • Most importantly, we reviewed the opportunity list and force ranked the applications based on technology, risk, and cost. This list then pointed the management team to the “low hanging fruit” to get us off to a fast start. Project Development We produced a list of low-risk projects and the best place to start was a “heater robot.” A heater robot transfers the heated billet from an induction heater to the bust station in the forge. This application must accommodate a large variety of billet sizes (required a simple finger changeover and some point offsets). Adding a part number is as easy as typing in the dimensions. The team agreed we would use the first heater robot as the model for the rest of the units, so we looked at the designs in detail to handle both axis vertical and axis horizontal loading into the forge. Also, we added a feature to advance the busted part to the block station for certain part families. The team decided to install a PLC with color HMI on each heater robot which would become the traffic manager for future automation efforts. The HMI was programmed with custom screens to support the operation of the unit.

Technical Risk

Cold Parts

Hot Parts

Process

Easier

Machine tending

Heater robot – simple

Heater robot-part advance and multiple orientations

Billet bin picking

Finished part packing

Trim press load/unload

Die spray-replace reciprocator

Part grinding Part inspection

Fully automatic forge tending

Harder

Part inspection

Figure 2: Automation Opportunity by Application

Training While the project build was underway, the hand-picked robot heroes went through their robot training. The students used real robots to learn basic operation and programming with special emphasis on safety and troubleshooting. The students came from different shifts to support the multiple shift operation.

Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) The team wanted to make the factory acceptance test (FAT) as real istic as possible. We could not use hot parts, but we did borrow forge tooling and mocked up the forge window to verify clearances. We used real billets to test the operation of the heater robot. The project required the robot to handle the smallest, largest, and heaviest billets so all of these billets were tested. The test procedure included

FIA MAGAZINE | MAY 2024 38