Cross-Industry Innovation Case Study

The tool manufacturer was developing a new family of products that couldn't be made with their existing equipment. They approached Wes-Tech requesting a dedicated squaring and welding machine to manufacture these new products.Most importantly, the manufacturer wanted this new assembly process to have the flexibility to run a wide range of product sizes on the same equipment, a capability none of their current machines had. Manufacturing different product sizes in the same system meant the automation must repeatedly square different-sized materials accurately.

During the collaborative discovery process, Wes-Tech learned that there were numerous problems with the current machine. For example, their machine had been developed with custom weld guns, which required that they keep a lot of exacting spares on hand. Moreover, these spares could only be obtained from the original manufacturer. So, if the equipment malfunctioned, there were several complex fixes and a high risk of downtime due to custom parts. In addition, the welding tips on the welding guns should have been dressed multiple times a day, but that process took so long that the operators ran the tips longer than were viable. This overuse resulted in a reduction of weld quality throughout the day.Part changeover took one to two hours at minimum, and switching welding tips would take hours or possibly even a half day. Due to the equipment design, someone would have to climb into the machine to perform a changeover and complete maintenance. This led to health and safety risks and sometimes resulted in further damage, causing even more downtime.The Wes-Tech team was not comfortable trying to replicate a bad design. Instead, Wes-Tech came up with a completely new automation solution that would help solve these problems for the customer, intending to improve operations and increase value.

Working closely with the customer, the Wes-Tech team drew on cross-industry experience in the automotive sector to implement a totally new process for this tool manufacturer.

Wes-Tech applied a “body-in-white” automotive assembly concept to the tool maker’s manufacturing process for a flexible, high-mix, high-variety, single-part-flow solution. They created a fully automated assembly process that could crowd, clamp, and square sheet metal to the precise geometry of multiple SKUs. This precision ultimately rewarded the customer with higher-quality products thanks to eliminating manufacturing irregularities. Repeated product consistency also meant huge cost savings thanks to significantly reduced waste.

To solve the welding issues, Wes-Tech integrated standard welding equipment rather than custom, so that the tool manufacturer could keep their extra stock of spare parts to a minimum; standard parts are usually readily available when ordered on short notice. Additionally, the machine design incorporated automatic tip dressing. This quick-change tooling provided an innovative way for welding tips to be changed through a window instead of by an operator climbing into the equipment. The solution allowed for automatic part changeover—what used to take one to two hours of downtime was reduced to 90 seconds, allowing more flexibility from a single piece of equipment.

Watch: Wes-Tech’s Innovative Solutions at Work

By drawing on cross-industry experience and enhancing the machine's flexibility, the Wes-Tech team solved numerous problems that the customer had considered unsolvable. This problem-solving resulted in:

• Significant cost savings thanks to a highly precise squaring process that eliminated waste due to product irregularities.
• Improved product quality thanks to automation that repeatedly perfectly squared products and automatic weld tip changeover.
• Significant reduction in risk due to reduced downtime and increased safety with new equipment design.
• Increased capacity and flexibility to expand with business needs as the new line can handle a much wider variety of pieces than existing lines.
• Accelerated time-to-market for new products because the equipment can weld multiple designs without lengthy changeovers.
• Reduced extraneous stock and maintenance issues with the use of standard parts.