HELLA Electronics, a top-tier automobile parts provider with operations in several countries, was evaluating ways to improve an existing pick and place operation that handled a lot of incoming and outgoing products. The operator still had to enter the workcell from time to time, which necessitated a dynamic work environment between the robot and the employee.
As the company sought methods to enhance its competitive advantage by incorporating more automation, it turned to Mitsubishi Electric. ASSISTA Series of collaborative robots were perfectly suited for the task with substantial load capacity and precise movement capabilities.
In partnership with Realtime Robotics, HELLA was able to accomplish the following:
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Decrease robot movement validation time to a couple of days.
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Reduce cycle time in half.
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Get dynamic obstacle avoidance so the robots are able to accurately operate between the task, the operators, the surrounding equipment and the employees.
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Get live collision avoidance, while quickly responding to an unexpected operation or variable task.
Hella has benefited from the flexibility to scale and modify existing manufacturing processes as needed. "One of the benefits of the Realtime Robotics platform with Mitsubishi hardware is its ability to drop in nearly any application that's going on. So whether that's a new line designed out of the gates or an existing line that has personnel on it, or maybe it had some legacy automation that you wanted to improve, it literally can function in any of those systems you drop in," said Tim Kalhorn, Channel Account Manager, Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc.
