Feature sponsored by Test & measurement
Zinkteknik has achieved successful growth ever since it was founded in 1985. Its 170-strong workforce is split between two European sites – at Bredaryd in Sweden, and Mostar in Bosnia (since 2005). Precision parts manufactured at these plants are mainly supplied to the automotive industry, but also to customers in other sectors including electronics, ICT and construction. “The requirements always get higher over time, especially for safety-critical parts in the automotive industry such as seat belt components. We manufacture more than 300 million parts per year, and we focus our efforts on one goal above all: the highest possible quality,” Svensson adds. As a Tier 2 supplier of parts to OEMs and car manufacturers all over the world, Zinkteknik has to meet demanding quality standards – and “zero- defect production” is the motto for the automotive industry in the 21st century.
RELIABLE AND EFFICIENT QUALITY ASSURANCE Per-Erik Edman, quality assurance engineer at Zinkteknik, explains the challenges of achieving zero-defect production in his specialty field of zinc die-casting: “With quantities of 30 to 40 million for just one single part in a year, our volumes are so high that there’s no chance of inspecting each individual part. This prompted us to implement in- process monitoring to ensure the quality of the parts we produce.” Edman’s team had already reduced the complaint rate to less than ten per year and series – a very low figure in relation to the enormous volumes involved. Now the question was: how to improve on that success and attain zero-defect production? “As it is often the case, the last step is the most difficult. But we had a stroke of luck: one of our customers, a Tier 1 supplier, recommended us to take a look at test automation solutions from Kistler,” Edman continues. Shortly after making first contact with Kistler in
2016, Zinkteknik ordered a KVC-821 – the latest- generation automated test and sorting system for end-of-line quality assurance. Zinkteknik’s engineers joined forces with Kistler’s image processing experts to determine the best camera configuration for identifying faulty automotive safety parts. “When we visited Germany to work on the fault analysis with the Kistler team, we had a very open discussion on what is possible and how best to achieve the desired results. The Kistler experts were also very clear about what was not possible – and at the same time, they explored various alternative ways of meeting the challenge.” With the help of the KVC-821 from Kistler, Zinkteknik was able to efficiently check millions of manufactured zinc parts for geometry and surface defects – and before long, they reached the all- important zero-defect goal. “The result was very convincing”, Edman recalls. “We supply one of our biggest customers with critical automotive parts that are intended to save lives – and we no longer received any complaints whatsoever from that customer.” Encouraged by this success, Zinkteknik then explored the possibility of integrating more test automation cells from Kistler into its production lines so as to achieve perfect results from other manufacturing projects.
Instrumentation Monthly October 2022
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