On April 20, Daihen held a plant tour for the press at its Rokko production center located in Rokko Island of Higashi Nada, Kobe, folllowing the completion of the first phase to automate the robot production line which had been undertaken since a long time ago.

The Rokko production center started operation in January 2008, which was aimed from the beginning to produce such robot products for industrial use as arc welding machines or handling/spot welders. Responding to the rising demand for robots and the investment boom to automate plants in China and other Asian countries, Daihen invested JPY400 million in last May for renewing the composition of production line on a large scale in order to increase the number of robot products. The aim has been attained by implementing the robotization of the operation line and automating the inter-line transportation, marking an increase by 43% from 7,000 to 10,000 robots of annual production.

The plant operation is shared on 2 floors of the first and the third floor. The storage of materials for robots and processing are carried out mainly on the first floor, while the processed components are fabricated and inspected mainly on the third floor. At the first phase the number of works has been reduced in comparison with the conventional manual operation and the work environment causing scattering of dusts has been improved.

In the fabricating process of the base units Daihen succeeded to attain a constant accuracy of quality at a high level by using the robot loaded with the sensor which accurately catches a working spot controlling force with the CCD camera and eliminates the uneven performance which may occur depending on operator’s ability. In addition man-power has been saved by adopting robots for the bolt palletizing system which couples washers with necessary bolts to assemble robots. Further enhancement of work efficiency has been attained by introducing 13 units of AGV (automated guided vehicle) loaded with a wireless power supply system of its own development for the inter-process carriage, and adopting five units of AGF (automated guided forklift) to carry finished products or raw materials.

In the meantime, the number of operators decreased by 10% as a whole of the automated robot production line at this time is shifted to the sales and technical divisions to utilize their practical experiences. Kentaro Kaneko manager of FA Robot Division foresees the future saying, “At this moment our automation has been attained only 30%, but for the second stage of development we aim at 70% in 2016 or 2017. Ultimately we wish to bring up our aimed to “have robots fully fabricate robots. In pursuit to make our plant play the role of showroom, we also would like to tackle positively selling out the AGV, AGF and wireless power supply systems.”

(Photo: AGF)