First, whether the process is necessary to put in automated equipment Generally consider importing automated equipment to replace manual operation in the following cases.
- poor operating environment, such as spraying and welding operations
- Manual operation makes the product quality unstable or fails to meet customer requirements.
- The products are large or heavy, making manual operation difficult.
- Long production cycle and life time of the product. For the automation only for the purpose of saving manpower, I suggest that it needs to be evaluated carefully.
Second, whether the process is suitable for putting automation equipment
- Stability of components: the quality of the product flowing downstream is not stable. If the components are not stable, the quality of the products processed by the equipment may not be as good as manual, and may cause frequent downtime of the equipment.
- Complexity of operation: The complexity of operation determines the cost of automation equipment and the feasibility of automation equipment technology. Even with industrial robots, complex assembly operations are difficult to achieve.
- Packaging method of parts: If you want to realize automatic loading, you need to change the original packaging method so that the loading mechanism can grasp the parts, and the cost increase caused by the change of packaging method needs to be calculated into the automation cost.
- Separability of parts: If you want to realize manual loading, you need to evaluate the separability of parts. Especially for some small parts, such as screws.
Third, how can the automation design meet the requirements of the lean model
- using small single-task equipment rather than large multi-task equipment; the more complex the equipment, the higher the cost, the less reliable it is, and the less flexible it is to respond to changes in demand.
- not to blindly pursue high-speed equipment; the efficiency of the equipment should be based on the principle of meeting the demand and ensuring the quality of the products.
- try to avoid batch processing equipment, batch processing equipment, although it has certain advantages in efficiency, but it will hinder the flow and make the production cycle too long. The second thing you need to pay attention to when choosing non-standard automation equipment is the problem of after-sales service, like this expensive machine once the problem requires repair is a considerable amount of money. Therefore, you need to choose a good after-sales service automation equipment manufacturers. They can not only provide home delivery and installation services for the purchaser, when the machine in use once any problem, the manufacturer will immediately come to repair, so as to minimize the impact on the production activities of the purchaser because of the machine palm. The third need to pay attention to the selection of non-standard automation equipment is the price issue. Price is a very sensitive topic, I believe that all buyers want to spend less money to buy better equipment. However, we all know that the price and the quality of the product are linked. Therefore, we should not just go for cheap and buy those machines with cheap price. Although these machines are cheaper to buy, but in the process of use is certainly not as good as those slightly more expensive, these machines in the post-maintenance and repair of the money spent is also quite a lot.