ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE SUPPLEMENT COVER STORY 42 ROBOTS CREATE 50 JOBS
Over the last two and a half years Trelleborg has installed 38 UR5 and 4 UR10 robots. First there were swift productivity and product uniformity gains. Then orders rose sharply and 50 new employees were needed at the factory in Helsingør, Denmark
special staff event where they were given a chance to see how easy the robots were to program and shown that they could be a colleague, not a competitor. Since then everyone can see the positive impact automation has had on job satisfaction, sales and job security.
A FASCINATING PARADOX The robots at Trelleborg enable one worker to keep eight CNC machines running at a time. Previously, one employee attended to three CNC machines. As a result, Trelleborg has saved 1.5 employees per cell per shift. However, no employees were fired during the period due to automation - quite the contrary. It created more jobs, because new orders rapidly followed the improvements in productivity and quality - a total of 36,000 orders are now being placed with Trelleborg annually. The orders range anywhere from one unit to series of several million. Trelleborg has taken on 50 new employees within the last two years, increasing the number of employees to approximately 330. “We use our CNC machines much better
B
efore this customers had been demanding lower prices, higher
quality, faster delivery and global competitors were taking Trelleborg’s market share. “We produce seals in high- tech plastic materials. These are used in cars, aircraft as well as many other industrial contexts,” said production manager in Helsingør, Jesper Riis. “For 10- 15 years we searched for suitable robots, but all needed safety shielding. We can’t extend the production area at our factory so this made them unfeasible.” Trelleborg had also been undergoing a major modernisation. Older machinery was being replaced by modern CNC machines and these also needed more space.
MINIMAL SPACE “Because the CNC machines take up more space than an old fashioned turning machines, very flexible small robots were needed to automate the attendance of these machines. The UR5 and UR10 from Universal Robots (UR) were the only ones which would fit because they were in most cases allowed to run without safety shielding,” said Riis. Globally, 80% of all UR robots in
industry have been risk assessed for operation without shielding. At Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, all 42 UR
S4 FEBRUARY 2015 | ROBOTICS & MOTION CONTROL
robots operate unshielded. Many of the CNC machines now typically operate unattended for about an hour or as long as there are items left to process. Most of the robots are fitted with a gripping hand from Schunk. All the robots have been delivered and integrated by KJV A/S and
CNC.dk, the distributor and integrator of Universal Robots in Denmark. The average return on investment (ROI) for each robot has been a year and a half. Now a UR-robot is purchased for each new CNC machine and the robots have been working continuous shifts since 2012. Management involved the 330
employees in the automation plans well in advance. They were introduced at a
Above and below: the robots at Trelleborg enable one worker to manage a cell with eight CNC machines running at a time. Previously, one employee attended to three CNC machines. The more UR robots Trelleborg deploys, the quicker the
production. Now eight new robots can begin working just three days after delivery
with robots, and our products have never been more uniform. Basically, this means that we have become very competitive and our turnover and earnings are increasing, especially as far as large batches are concerned. It’s been tough to get so many robots into operation in less than three years. Now new installations have become so routine that it just takes us and the integrator three days to install a new cell with eight new robots and put them into production”, said head of production technology, Henrik Tørnes.
A ‘JOB SEEKING’ ROBOT Trelleborg Sealing Solutions keep a new robot available in their machine building department, which the employees can experiment with to find the next automation task. When the task for the robot is found, it is implemented and Trelleborg Sealing Solutions purchases a new ‘job seeking’ robot. “The way we think has changed and we
are all constantly looking for new processes to automate”, concluded Riis. A video for this application can be
viewed at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEWNyLeMG uU.
Universal Robots
www.universal-robots.com T: +45 89 938 989
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