Robotic innovations
Bühler Changzhou welcomes a new bending cell robot to its family. This new member will help to reduce costs and improve repetitive quality. Let’s take a closer look at the latest addition and what it’s capable of.
Julia Lyubova, March 31, 2022
In a pilot operation, Bühler Changzhou in China has introduced a new robot for its operations – a robot bending cell. The machine has been successfully tested and is in full operation in the factory since February this year. The robot will help the team of 660 people make annual savings of approximately CHF 60,000 and will relieve the workers of doing a repetitive manual job. It will enable workers to focus on complex and more interesting aspects of bending, and our colleagues in Changzhou hope that it will help them attract new talents.
Raffael Eggmann, Production Manager at Bühler Changzhou, oversaw the investment from day one: “Thanks to this new robot, we can not only reduce costs today by having a more efficient bending process, but we can also reduce cost increases in the future. And we can make the bending job more interesting and attract young talents! We must foresee that it will become more and more difficult to find skilled people for this kind of work and people who are willing to work in shifts.”
Bühler Changzhou has five manual bending machines with a useful lifetime of 10 years. The idea for a new robot came after the company investigated options for innovative ways to improve the bending process. Instead of replacing a manual bending machine with another, they opted for a robot bending machine. The colleagues in Changzhou supply around 20,000 machines per year to Bühler’s feed and food customers around the world. It is no stranger to using robots in their production. It currently has four robot welding machines and plans for more to join the family. But it was a difficult task to find the right partner for this project.
Normally it is easy to find a supplier for a robot for simple bending operations. But Bühler Changzhou had a very specific requirement – a robot bending cell that must be able to bend “hoppers” (stepwise bending). Initially they approached five different suppliers, but three of them refused the job right away and said it was not possible.
However, Raffael and his team did not give up and continued their search for a partner and eventually found DeraTech, a Belgian company present in China, who were just as passionate about this project as them. The testing began on a trial-and-error basis and after several trials showed first potential, experts from Bühler Changzhou and DeraTech quickly made progress.
“The supplier did the first trials in their show room based on our drawings. Later we sent Yao Pengfei, our experienced bending team leader to the supplier to support which then finally led to success. In total, he spent about one week with the supplier. Quite a few test pieces were necessary until we were satisfied with the repetitive quality and proven efficiency,” says Raffael.
The team signed a contract with DeraTech in April 2021 and the robot bending cell was productive one month ahead of plan by October 1.
Raffael couldn’t be happier with the result: “With this investment, we have on one hand demonstrated our ability to create an innovation by thinking outside of the box and not shy away if someone says it is not possible. On the other hand, we have created a positive impact on production costs as well as on the environment. With the new bending machine, we reduce our energy consumption by 50% compared to our existing machine due to latest servo motor technology but we are also able to reduce the consumption of hydraulic oil by 50%. Considering not only cost but also the impact on energy, waste, and water has become a normal when benchmarking different suppliers and products of future assets.”
With this investment, we have on one hand demonstrated our ability to create an innovation by thinking outside of the box and not shy away if someone says it is not possible. On the other hand, we have created a positive impact on production costs as well as on the environment.
Raffael Eggmann,
Production Manager at Bühler Changzhou
Raffael says he is very proud of the project team who made all this possible: Ren Xiaobao, Yao Pengfei from cutting/bending workshop, Zhu Haoying sourcing/buyer for Investments, Ren Xinlei for Maintenance and Equipment Safety, Dario Giannuzzi for production quality, Chen Wei for EHS (Environment Health and Safety), Shi Liuxiang for IE/PE and costing, and Jiang Danping for MLCO.
On September 10, 2021, Bühler Changzhou held a special opening ceremony to introduce the new robot bending cell to the team and the management from sales to R&D, Product Management and Project Execution to see the robot e in action. To demonstrate the advantages, they had one manual bending machine and the robot bending cell set up with exactly same workpiece – a screw conveyor hopper – and started them at the same time. This way, the difference could easily be seen; one robot versus two persons manually, and it took the robot 10 minutes to complete the task, while the two colleagues took 30 minutes.
“It was very exciting for me and the project team to invite our management team. It is important that we give signals to our business in showing how we keep up with manufacturing trends and ensure profitability for our company by focusing on quality and cost today but also for tomorrow,” he says.
The robot bending cell even served champagne to all attendees for a real feel of an opening ceremony.
The robot bending cell should be able to reach return on investment in as little as 3 years. And the team has big plans for more robots/automatization in other aspects of its production too. “We’re working on projects to further increase our level of automatization in welding. Besides that, we are currently working on two projects and investment applications in internal logistics and in warehouse,” Raffael explains.
This bending robot is one of several examples of innovations in our Manufacturing, Logistics, Supply Chain (MLS) department. And it is not just robots, there are five big innovation projects currently happening: SAP Integrated Business Planning, mCORE, Digital Factory Management, Computer-aided Quality Assurance, and Transportation Management.
MLS has several key ingredients to stay innovative – a clear vision of what they want to achieve, an idea platform to share and collaborate ideas and a culture that embraces experiential learning, quick prototyping, and values learnings from each attempt to innovate.
For Susie Liu, Strategic & Innovation Manager at MLS, innovation is key to remaining competitive: “It is absolutely vital that MLS stays innovative to make sure that we manufacture and ship the orders to our customers in the most efficient, sustainable, and profitable way so that our company stays competitive in the market. The efficiencies we gain in our operations have a direct impact on the bottom line of the company.”
With this drive for innovation, it will be exciting to see which robot will be next to join the MLS family.
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