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Cobots elevate competitive edge through product quality

Assa Abloy - Romania

In short

Assa Abloy is a global leader in door-opening solutions, offering a wider product range than any other company on the market. This also means high requirements on product variability and configurations resulting in an increased demand for automation in a region with an ever-widening shortage of labor. ASSA ABLOY Romania has now implemented four UR3 and six UR5 cobots in a range of applications including welding, stamping, riveting, screw driving, grinding and machine tending.

ASSA ABLOY’s factory in Bucharest suffered from a huge skills gap in the country’s capital city, where the unemployment rate is low. Difficulties to attract new workers to manufacturing prompted the company to look for different automation solutions like robots, AGV vehicles, bin picking systems and sorting equipment.

“Before buying the first robot we had the opportunity to test it in our factory,” said Iustin Simion, Automation Manager in ASSA ABLOY Romania. “The main reason for choosing Universal Robots was the good repeatability of the operations. The most significant advantages of UR robots are graphical and script programming interfaces, repeatability, reduced delivery time and a wide range of end-effectors and accessories.”

Assa Abloy Romania

Industry Furniture & Equipment

Country Europe

Number of Employees 100-500

Cobots used UR3 & UR5

Video — UR5 and UR3 robot, Assa Abloy, NZ

The solution

Assa Abloy Romania has implemented UR robots in a variety of applications that include welding, stamping, riveting, screwing, grinding, and others.

These mostly machine tending tasks consist of a UR robot loading raw parts in a machine that performs these processes, either in-line applications or as stand-alone robotic cells, the processed parts are then transferred to another station in a different part of the factory.

The company currently operates four UR3 and six UR5 robots with Robotiq 2-finger adaptive robot gripper a UR+ solution and custom made end-effectors. Deployment of the collaborative robots took several weeks. "Depending on the complexity we can have a robot up and running in 1-2 months and one more for fine-tuning“ said Iustin Simion.

Unlocking quality and efficiency

With implemented robots, ASSA ABLOY Romania increased the focus on the constant quality of manufactured components. Staying competitive is the single biggest challenge by keeping and lowering manufacturing costs while maintaining the quality of the products. Automation was one of the major ways to deliver needed results – with Universal Robots technology as an important part of it. The UR robots in production are estimated to produce the equivalent of 10 human workers, who can do more valuable tasks now.

Empowering efficiency and collaboration

Another important benefit is the UR robots’ flexibility and user-friendly nature. “I’ve been working with UR robots for more than a year now almost on a day-to-day basis and I am always learning new things, but the time it took to get the robot moving with simple programs was one week,” said Razvan Stoleru, Mechanical Design Engineer in ASSA ABLOY Romania, who is not the only one familiar with the robots. Now, the whole ASSA ABLOY team can interact with the robots and solve small issues or errors.

Due to current trends like a shortage of qualified employees, increasing demand for consistent quality and for individualized products, we see big opportunities in automating production processes. UR collaborative robots provide us with the flexibility we need for satisfying demand of our customers – quickly, with consistent quality, and all at an effective price.

Iustin simion, Automation manager, Assa Abloy Romania