Grinding and Palletizing Cobots Boost Productivity

Established in 1970 by Athanasios Rivios, RIVIMETAL began its journey by serving the local market with aluminum, zinc, and brass castings, specializing in the manufacture of castings for companies such as Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen, Fiat group and many more. Today, RIVIMETAL is a leading specialist in the production of high-pressure die castings alloys, and is widely regarded as one of the best Greek companies in terms of quality, flexibility, and competitive world prices in castings.

Rivimetal, a manufacturing company specializing in aluminum car spare parts, faced the challenge of increasing productivity to remain competitive while suffering from a shortage of skilled personnel. Realizing that automation was the only way to overcome this challenge, Rivimetal partnered with Sabo Electric and Universal Robots to free their skilled workers from mundane, repetitive tasks. By deploying the modular, UR cobot-powered automation solution for grinding and palletizing. Rivimetal has added hundreds of production hours to its capacity annually, boosting productivity with up to 82%, resulting in the cobots paying for themselves within 15 months .

The Business Challenge

Rivimetal was using two people for grinding aluminum products, resulting in significant drops in productivity due to worker fatigue.. Rivimetal was further challenged by the professional manpower shortage and the need to increase production, prompting the Rivimetal team to make a shift; the company's skilled workers needed to be freed from mundane, repetitive tasks, which could be accomplished by cobots.