ST Robot Investments magazine: Eskisehir factory of the world’s largest automotive part industry supplier GKN driveline solved its problem of increase in its production capacity and carriage of heavy loads harming the health of workers in parallel with the ever-growing production organization with robotic automation systems. OLBRICHT/ALTINAY was the first choice for GKN. OLBRICHT/ALTINAY Project Development and Sales Engineer Emre Fırıl told us their robotic applications for the GKN Driveline.
Interview: Simge Erkurt / Photos: Çağlar Çağlar
GKN Driveline is an affiliate of GKN group with 5 billion $ annual revenue as world’s foremost axle and transmission systems supplier having 90 percent of the market in Turkey was making new investments in recent years with new barshaft processing and assembly lines in compliance with growing automobile market and resolved to invest in robotic systems in order to meet the demand for high efficiency and low wastage production requirement. OLBRICHT/ALTINAY has been the first choice of GKN driveline due to its over 20 years experience and solution design and software experience in addition to ability to offer customers high-performance seamless field installations. OLBRICHT/ALTINAY Project Development and Sales Engineer Emre Fırıl told us what kinds of robot application engineering they developed for GKN Driveline.
Mr. Firil, last year GKN Driveline expanded its production capacity in Eskisehir factory with4.5 million Euros of investment to meet the increasing demands of automotive manufacturers. What works you performed for this factory?
The system established automated quality control and palletizing operations at the end of the axle assembly line and increased production efficiency. Due to high weight operator work efficiency was low before and also one by one separator loading operation that challenged and bound operator to locating was eliminated. Yaskawa robots compatible with high security system was used in system. In addition, CE certification system was prepared for all systems. As a result, GKN Driveline preferred robot investment as the most rational and flexible method required for growth in global market and took an action according to high quality and efficiency by vision of GKN. Also GKN Driveline has made a new contract for induction hardening machine with robotic loading and unloading system in barshaft processing line and continues cooperation with Altınay by increasing robot investments.