Zoller Event Shines Lights on Shopfloor Connectivity

As all manufacturers strive to improve productivity with fewer skilled workers on the shop floor, there are suppliers in the industry providing solutions that not only create efficiency but also require less of a technical skill set to run the equipment. In other words, they are supplying shopfloor workers with smart equipment that basically shows an operator how to use it — in some cases with a light signal – without any training or referring to a manual.

Zoller, for example, is a company whose vision is to offer smart manufacturing via its digital network, automation and ease-of-use built into its products. This manufacturer of presetting, measuring devices and tool management software held its Technology Days and Open House Event May 9-11, at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where it highlighted its latest products with new interconnectivity capabilities.

I attended the event on May 11, which focused on “CAM to Part — the Entire Process Chain of Zoller Solutions” that day. Along with browsing the facility’s showroom which featured its latest technologies, I sat in on presentations given by company experts, including a keynote from company president, Alexander Zoller. Also, Scott Volk, Metalquest (located in Nebraska and Idaho) machine shop executive vice president and COO, discussed how partnering with Zoller has improved its production efficiency.

Presentations by Zoller employees described how Zoller is creating its products to enable departments in a manufacturing facility to talk to one another in a virtual sense. The company’s TMS (Tool Management Solutions) can provide a single-source database as well as a tool storage system, data transfer, tool monitoring and toolholders that are all interconnected.

Implementing such a system is said to supply machine shops with more efficiency because it forces programmers to use a specific set of tools that are equipped with a Zoller ID chip. This ID chip contains a QR code on the toolholder that enables tool traceability. Traceability offers many advantages for a shop, including tracking tools back to the machines in which they were used, tool life visibility and more.

With the ID chip in place, an operator only needs to scan the barcode to retrieve the tool’s information from the TMS database. The chip also extends communication with machine tool interfaces, including FANUC and Heidenhain CNCs and soon Siemens CNCs as well. With this capability, further integration is possible for Industry 4.0 technology.  

The tool storage demos for the company’s Keeper and ToolOrganizer smart cabinets in one presentation caught my attention because of the lighting on these cabinets that was used to signal to an operator the location of the tools needed.

For example, the demos showed an operator reviewing the setup sheet on a monitor that reveals which tools are out of stock. Then the drawer that contains the replacement tool components in the ToolOrganizer cabinet lights up to show its location. Once he/she has those components, the operator opens the Keeper door that is again lit up to signal to the operator where the assemblies are located.

The headquarters’ showroom also included the Hyperion and Smile presetting and measuring machines, which are both for turned part production.