Project Description

Higher productivity and competitiveness thanks to collaborative robots

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How do you make yourself more competitive? - The result

Various goals were achieved by using the robotic arms from Universal Robots.

In particular, productivity and competitiveness have been significantly improved. This is mainly due to streamlined processes that allow employees to perform several tasks simultaneously. Ultimately, the individual workpieces are now more uniform and of higher quality.

The challenge in the company

A major challenge for BJ-Gear is the competitive pressure. The production of the various gearbox solutions in Denmark was becoming increasingly challenging. For this reason, there was only one solution: optimization and automation where possible.

Bjørn Sommer, Operations Manager at BJ-Gear, confirms this: "Our aim is to make such a large part of the process and production run without human intervention - from the raw product to the finished workpiece."

He has been involved with the topic of Lean Enterprise for 15 years and has been managing the construction of a completely new optimized factory since 2005.

Until now, however, the company has been reluctant to use robots. The amortization time of the existing solutions was very high due to the high costs.

  • Competitive pressure
  • Costs of conventional robots

The Universal Robots solution

Universal Robots' solutions have completely changed BJ-Gear's perception of robots.

Bjørn Sommer briefly summarizes the successful use of the cobots: "The flexible lightweight robots UR5 and UR10 are so inexpensive that the costs have been amortized very quickly. Our calculations show that the cost of a robot from Universal Robots has been recovered in less than a year."

A total of four robot solutions from Universal Robots are used at BJ-Gear. One of the collaborative robots is a UR5. This robot is used to paint pre-assembled gearboxes with a normal spray gun. Thanks to the automation of this painting work, the quality of the results was improved and one employee was able to move on to other tasks. At the same time, the working environment has been improved as employees spend less time in the paint booth.

UR5 robot at BJ-Gear

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Up to now, BJ-Gear has only painted one product series. However, with new possibilities, workpieces can also be painted in random order in the future. According to Bjørn Sommer, this will soon be possible: "A chip in the equipment, which is used to define the painting program, enables a scanner to forward a message to the UR5 with information about which program and which color is required. This will optimize the production flow and shorten delivery times."

The two other UR5 robots were used to modernize and automate the older equipment. The deburring and punching of gear wheels was fully automated with one robot. It finishes the workpieces. The other collaborative robot works on three machines simultaneously. It operates a lathe, a cutting machine and an automatic washing machine. Without the involvement of an employee, 100 units can be produced per hour.

The last collaborative robot in use is a UR10. It is used to automate processes with workpieces weighing more than 5 kg.

UR5 robot at BJ-Gear

"The flexible lightweight robots UR5 and UR10 are so inexpensive that the costs are amortized very quickly. Our calculations show that the cost of a Universal Robots robot is recovered in less than a year."

Bjørn Sommer, BJ-Gear

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