The customer now has an uninterrupted production cycle with no mould change downtime, reduced manpower, reduced part handling damage and significant space savings.
The Challenge
One of the biggest automotive OEMs approached Promation to solve bumper delivery from mould injection to paint line. The paint line demands several different bumper configurations to match the car chassis. The bumpers had been manually sorted, stored and handled with the help of bumper racks on casters, requiring significant manpower and storage space and causing parts damage, delays and workers’ injuries.
The Promation Solution
Promation proposed a fully automated, multi-level, multi-lane bumper buffer storage for the temporary storage of up to 240 transferred bumpers. The special-purpose conveyor lanes were developed with the use of aluminium extrusion and high-strength polyurethane belts. Each lane receives, accumulates and discharges a specific model of bumper. The lane can accommodate 10 bumpers, with eight lanes on one level and three levels in one buffer storage. Promation’s AGV or Retrieval Machine loads and unloads the bumpers. A special conveying system developed by Promation for the bumper storage was the key innovative conveying solution in this project.
The Benefit
The customer now has an uninterrupted production cycle with no mould change downtime, reduced manpower, reduced part handling damage and significant space savings by creating a vertical multiple-storey, multi-lane automated buffer storage. Workers’ injuries from sorting bumpers and handling bulky bumper carts on casters were eliminated. The bumper storage was seamlessly integrated with the customer’s operations, and they placed multiple orders for the Automated Bumper Storage System in North America.