manufactures precision parts for the custom machine-building industry. The company is located in Gebesee, a town of 2,000 residents in the Thuringian Basin, where the shortage of skilled workers is particularly acute: In 2023, 49.5 percent of all open positions lacked qualified workers, and the forecast through 2035 does not look much better. <\/p>\n\n
Owner Rene Liebl’s goal: To secure regional production in Gebesee by decoupling the job processing from staffing levels, so that short-notice jobs can be fulfilled regardless of staff availability.<\/p>\n\n
And even today, highly fluctuating demand remains at the heart of our day-to-day operations. A predictable order intake often does not reflect reality. Customers expect\u2014especially for urgent requests\u2014delivery within a few days or even right after the weekend. For requests with short lead times, there were none of the operators available for production during the late or night shifts. <\/p>\n\n
The solution consisted of a CNC automation system that continues to operate even after the operators have finished their shifts. The system was designed to load a MAZAK VCN-530C vertical machining center. The processing machine was retrofitted with a robot interface and two pneumatic clamping devices. The robot controller manages the clamping device, which minimized the cost of the retrofit. To further increase autonomous runtime, the SherpaLoader\u00ae was additionally equipped with a re-gripping station, allowing both the front and back sides to be machined in a single pass. <\/p>\n\n
A SpaceBox serves as the material storage unit; it can hold over 400 blank parts measuring 60 x 100 x 35 mm, enabling an autonomous runtime of more than 60 hours.<\/p>\n\n
Without any additional shift premiums, a robot now handles rush orders at night or mass production runs on weekends, ensuring that the parts are ready for shipment the next business day.<\/p>\n\n
The workload on operators is reduced not only by eliminating night shifts, but also by simplifying order preparation. Today, the picking of raw material blanks is no longer performed by machine operators but by warehouse workers. Thanks to the decoupling of logistics and manufacturing, material preparation now takes place in the warehouse rather than in front of the machine tool, as was previously the case. <\/p>\n\n
The secret to productivity lies not so much in speed as in the stability and continuity of processes. While an operator can work only one shift, a robot can work up to three shifts\u2014without breaks and at a constant speed. For suitable jobs, the robot can be operated for more than 100 hours per week. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cQualified machine operators are hard to come by at the Gebesee site. That\u2019s why we can only improve on-time delivery with the help of a robot. We simply can\u2019t afford not to automate our CNC machines!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Qualified machine operators are hard to come by at the Gebesee site. Therefore, improving on-time delivery can only be achieved with the help of a robot.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7271,"template":"","class_list":["post-4459","casestudy","type-casestudy","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mafu-sherpa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/casestudy\/4459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mafu-sherpa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/casestudy"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mafu-sherpa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/casestudy"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mafu-sherpa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mafu-sherpa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}