Published 5/12/2019

What is the Role of Collaborative Automation in Production?

Thyssenkrupp Bilstein’s North American operations is finding out. The shock absorber manufacturer has eight cobots and counting in its Ohio production facility, plus two autonomous vehicles. Here are scenes from its shop where the picture of automation is changing.

Brent Donaldson

Editor-in-Chief, Modern Machine Shop

Figure 1. “When we look at innovation, it's always three-fold,” Mr. Schmahl says. “It's innovation for the product itself, for the manufacturing processes and equipment, and how we engage our workforce with training.” Here, Bilstein manufacturing engineers Herman Baker (right) and Douglas Mcle demonstrate those pillars while consulting near a station that includes welding and hole punching. The cobot helps transition the part from the welding operation to the punching process.

“People assume that with automation you automatically replace someone’s job,” Mr. Schmahl says. “But typically, the job requirement just changes. So, in a lot of areas where there had before been very physical requirements, now there’s much more quality control, parts checking and more time for personal development and leadership training. Those are the areas that really enable us to drive this business.”

Figure 2. Floor space is at a premium at Bilstein’s Ohio plant, and the ability of cobots to assist with sequential processes without the need for protective fencing (as is required for conventional industrial robots) not only speeds production, but also saves space. Here, a machine operator oversees a station that includes metal forming, descaling and welding, while a cobot picks up and advances newly formed steel tubes between machines. “In the past with this process, you would have to put each part somewhere on the floor until it was ready for the next step,” Mr. Schmahl says. “And so now, all of this is eliminated, because for the employee, the entire sequence is now just one step. Plus, we are now able to incorporate a 100-percent gaging process, which we didn't have before and is a big advantage.”

Figure 3. Typically when we think of cobots we envision them working alongside a human. But in this case, the two cobots are tending an inner/outer tube modular assembly station. This is a case in which automation occurred without reconfiguring the station itself—cobots simply carry out mundane tasks that humans used to perform. Yet as business increases annually at Bilstein, efficiencies like this have actually allowed the company to hire more employees who can operate machines and perform a greater variety of higher-value work.

However, in case of a cobot malfunction at this station, a human can take over the cobot’s task rather than shutting down this operation. In a related story, Bilstein engineers made a novel discovery one day when faced with the possibility of having to hardwire the cobots into the control system to enable the machines to run in sequence with robot loading and unloading. The (much) easier solution? Program a cobot to physically push the start button.

Figure 4. Here is an example of a cobot aiding in production alongside Bilstein employee EJ Seck in the inner tube cell of the company’s plant. In this sequence, as the Emco CNC lathe finishes machining each tube (Fig. 4), the tube is picked up by a cobot (Fig. 5) and placed in the next machine to be hole-punched (Fig. 6). Mr. Seck then places the part on the final machine to be flared at one end. Notice the blue plastic grippers on the end of the cobot, which Bilstein 3D prints in house.

“In the purest sense, this is another example of a collaboration where the cobot is in the same workplace as the employee,” Mr. Schmahl says. This collaboration also gives the operator more time for quality-control checks.

Figure 5. (See Fig. 4 for description.)

Figure 6. (See Fig. 4 for description.)

Figure 7. Here is a more traditional view of automation. Bilstein uses conventional robotic cells for higher-production areas and heavier parts. “If that middle robot breaks down for whatever reason, I don't get a single part out of that line until that is fixed,” Mr. Schmahl says. “With cobots, I stop it and put an employee there and keep running. Again, it's not right or wrong; it’s just different.”

An operator assists with the process by placing new parts on the rotating tray rather than shutting down the cell for loading. This same operator also performs quality checks at that time. “Every type of automation has its place,” Mr. Schmahl says

Figure 8. Bilstein uses two AIVs made by Mobile Industrial Robots, including this one, the MiRHook 200. Bilstein employees deploy these vehicles on “missions” via Bluetooth or WiFi on smartphones, tablets or computers, typically for tasks such as transporting parts between stations and pulling carts of trash toward the dumpster bay. When deployed, each AIV uses cameras and sensors to navigate, slowly but surely, between people and obstacles—including pallet jacks and other heavy equipment that rumble down the plant floor—until the robot arrives at the mission-defined location. The AIV then scans a QR code located on the cart’s front panel, latches on, and delivers the payload.

Figure 9. Cobots can also be tasked with loading parts into a cart or basket and then summoning the AIV to take them away when the basket is full. Mr. Schmahl says that his team is still tweaking the programming for the AIVs, but that they have already helped free workers from non-value-added activities. It is also easy to tell that he gets a kick out of it all. “I mean, every little bit of what we’re doing is a step-by-step process,” he says. “We started with our first cobot, and by the time we deployed the next one, we already knew much more than we knew before. You can't do that in PowerPoint or Excel. You've really got to get them started and gain that knowledge and the nuances of what you are trying to do.”

Figure 10. Thyssenkrupp Bilstein of America President and Chief Executive Officer Fabian Schmahl. Mr. Schmahl will speak with MMS’s Peter Zelinski at the new MT360 manufacturing event (mt360conference.com) in Silicon Valley this June.

Thyssenkrupp Bilstein knows about exacting demands. The German multinational is perhaps the premier suspension supplier for the performance and luxury auto market. The suspension systems manufactured at Bilstein’s American headquarters in Hamilton, Ohio, can be found on high-end sedans, trucks, vans, off-road vehicles and sports cars for the Big-Three automakers, Toyota and Nissan, as well as Mercedes-Benz and new electric vehicle startups. In short, the company positions itself as the market leader for advanced fully active and semi-active suspensions worldwide.

For Bilstein, the changeable nature of its customers’ demands requires lean manufacturing processes and the ability to constantly adapt. During a recent interview and plant tour with Fabian Schmahl, Thyssenkrupp Bilstein of America’s president and chief executive officer, it became clear that collaborative automation is becoming a key tool for what we will call Bilstein’s adaptive growth.

In just 10 years, Bilstein’s Ohio plant has tripled its size and quadrupled its workforce to 800 employees. Mr. Schmahl credits that growth to widespread innovation, and specifically to management’s dedication to processes associated with Industry 4.0 initiatives. To sustain that growth and keep its current workforce happy, Bilstein has made a commitment to its employees to increase transparency at the company while decreasing dull, repetitive tasks. This is partly why you’ll find eight cobots (slang for collaborative robots) from Universal Robots (UR) spread across four stations at the plant, as well as two autonomous intelligent vehicles (AIVs) that cautiously meander through the aisles, performing mundane tasks such as taking out the trash.

This story is a snapshot of what safe, collaborative automation looks like today at Thyssenkrupp Bilstein of America, which might be different than you imagine. That is because the strategy that Mr. Schmahl and his employees have taken is to automate the easiest processes first, including non-value-added tasks such as delivering carts full of parts or hauling away scraps. This is not to say that Bilstein does not have complex, automated robotic cells that look like a postcard for advanced manufacturing, but its cobots and AIVs offer different value propositions to the company. They are flexible automation solutions that can be redeployed where needed. And as you’ll see in the photos above, sometimes that means working side-by-side with a human, and sometimes it does not.