Learn how APPSistem delivered a Digital Engineering Solution for an Automotive Line Builder

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The Client: A global automotive line builder

Industry: Transportation (Automotive)

Services:

Digital engineering for spot welding application including process planning, overall layout, concept designs for fixtures and equipment, robotic simulation, manufacturing drawings, and offline programming.

Project Background:

The plant in Belgium was an assembly plant and received parts from Japan and Turkiye. Parts were stored in a temporary warehouse and the movement of parts for the assembly line were determined by the vehicle build schedule.

Build simulation of “as-is” flow process (create digital Twin), compare results of simulation versus actual environment. Study the benefits of using an ASRS system. If beneficial, propose an efficient system design to replace the flow racks with ASRS.

Our Scope

Process
Defining product structure to accommodate 3 variants, spot weld distribution, weld gun selection, cycle time study, line balancing and safety studies.
System Layout
Generating cell layout with equipment position while ensuring the safety of the 35-robot line. We helped identify the primary variant and optimized the layout for the other variants.
Concept Design
Design of geo fixtures for spot welding and modular grippers
Robotic Simulation
Process validation, tool validation, cycle time validation, safety assessment and robot extraction plan.
Manufacturing Drawings
Preparation of 2D manufacturing drawings with Bills of Material
Offline Programming
Downloading offline programming using robotic controllers and validating programs on the shop

Our Solution:

Our team for this project comprised of welding domain experts with the experience of working with major automotive welding line builders. We adopted a 2-shift approach given the short lead time of 16 weeks ensuring on-time delivery and quality deliverables. APPSistem was able to identify critical issues well ahead of time and proposed valuable recommendations to our client at various stages of the project from process planning, system layout, concept design all the way to robotic simulation, and offline programming. Our ability to understand the intricacies of OEM standards helped the customer ensure concurrent engineering despite working across geographies.

Benefits to our Client: