Roto's Window and Door Technology Division (FTT) reports further targeted Industry 4.0 projects after the global hardware manufacturer recently announced its entry into additive manufacturing. Now information is being provided on the integration of collaborative production robots. This can work in the same room in close proximity to humans. Its installation took place in Lövö, Hungary, on the automatic packaging unit at a rotary table workstation for centre closure assembly. The function of the new "colleague": to stack the components transported by a conveyor belt, bundle them, label them and place them in a collection container. He will also be used for the packaging of finished parts. For this purpose, it is directly assigned to an Axerstulp assembly machine, which, for example, produces "Roto NX" fittings in large quantities and in two different lengths.
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At a later date, driverless transport systems will also be set up. The refilling of long semi-finished parts both between the warehouse and the corresponding machine and between the packaging cell and the finished goods warehouse is to be handled with this.
For the customers of the window and door technology specialist, the new robot era, the establishment of which is also planned in other of the 15 FTT plants worldwide, will have a positive effect above all on delivery quality. It will be even more efficient, reliable and accurate.
Artificial intelligence to be utilized for this purpose
A second digitalisation pilot project, on the other hand, is still at the beginning of a "groundbreaking but seemingly unspectacular development". Basically, the aim is to maintain the functionality of plants in the long term by collecting and processing technical data with the help of artificial intelligence. In detail, this means: recognising possible malfunctions of machines in time, preventing serious malfunctions, minimising maintenance costs and avoiding downtimes in production. Ultimately, it is also important here to secure the customer benefit of punctual delivery. This stabilises the production processes of window and door manufacturers in the long term.
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In order to achieve these goals, Roto is working intensively on online machine diagnostics. Lövö, as the largest production site within the FTT production network, offers the best conditions for this with a good 600 employees. Among other things, it has a number of automatic punching machines. The new digital system is being tested on one of them. After successful completion of the pilot application, which Kocsis expects at the beginning of 2022, the transformation to other plants is planned.
