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From a sheet metal blank to a finished component in just 37 seconds - made possible by the new ABB robots in the Wolfsburg factory of German automotive supplier KWD Automobiltechnik GmbH.
Installed in eight welding cells, these robots produce wheel housings, sills and A-pillars for a well-known German car manufacturer. Realizing they needed a new solution to meet the demands of their customer, KWD had rather stringent requirements for cycle times between parts.
“The necessary parts could not be produced with our existing equipment,” explains KWD production manager Randy Koch, describing why the company invested in eight new automated welding cells. “The process from loading the blanks to the finished component, for instance, could not take longer than 37 seconds at each station.”
Thanks to intensive simulations carried out in advance, ABB engineers were able to guarantee this cycle time.
“This project earned ABB an ‘A plus’,” says Guido Wittenberg, who is responsible for the technical planning at KWD. “On average, the other suppliers’ concepts were 10% slower than our specification. In addition, space is restricted in our production halls and the space-saving design of the ABB robotic cells came in very handy for us.”