Discrete Manufacturing requires the control of the assembly equipment as well as the ability to track and manage the individual components of the assembly. Avanceon’s solutions in Discrete Manufacturing extend beyond the control of equipment. Our solutions manage inventory, track production material, provide production records and reports, and interface with operators.
Improve Your Discrete Industries Manufacturing
Typical discrete manufacturing is highly reliant on machines, vision systems and robotics to provide the needed level of hands off manufacturing. As a result, Avanceon provides complete design and integration services. Our solutions start at the requirements level with a need to understand the business problem to then translate into an overall design of the machine or process area. Key components and processes are prototyped and demonstrated prior to final approval. Once the design is approved Avanceon will implement the solution and thoroughly test it prior to integration with the rest of the equipment or line. Once assembled the overall line or operation is staged and tested in an integrated manner. Upon completion of integration testing, Avanceon’s team of engineers will follow the system to the field for commissioning and final acceptance.
Discrete Industries Solutions
Avanceon delivers a wide variety of solutions to the discrete industries market including:
Corrugated Box Manufacturing
One of the key areas of Avanceon expertise in the Discrete industry focuses on our solutions and experience in the Corrugated Box Manufacturing process. The key area of automation value in the space beyond the complex machines that are developed by Original Equipment Manufacturers is in the area of Quality Conformance and Management. While Corrugated boxes and paper provide easy shipping and storage solutions their manufacturing can be impacted by a number of quality issues that are difficult to manage without automated solutions. Avanceon provides solutions targeted on improving Box production quality including:
Label Verification
Shipping the wrong product can diminish a manufacturer’s brand and negatively impact profits. Avanceon has designed solutions that work within the confines of the existing controls environment and installed systems that check the label against the currently running SKU. This system can alert the user to a problem in several different ways (line stop, light alert or a simple report). This solution helps avoid instances of “Wrong Product, Wrong Label.”
Box Count Check
Customers struggle with the incorrect number of boxes being shipped within packs. If you sell a 20 pack that only has 19, customers become dissatisfied. If you sell a 20 pack that has 21, you’ve lost 5% of your profit! In spaces where it is not possible or financially viable to implement a Check weigher, we have implemented a vision system that completes this check and historize the result.
Glue Conformance
An insufficient amount of glue can cause boxes to lose their structure. This is a difficult problem to detect manually. We can verify the correct amount of glue has been applied to the correct area at high rates of speed, and create a system that alerts users of a problem however they’d prefer.
Gap Conformance
Lack of gap conformance creates boxes that cannot be folded properly, and can lead to unhappy customers. When manual inspection proves too cumbersome, we can craft a solution that uses a dual camera vision system to compare gaps for all boxes in a bundle against the opposite side to confirm that specifications have been met.
Strike Box
There are hundreds of possible box defects that are critical to the information provided to the end customer about its contents. If any of this information is wrong or defective the boxes value goes to zero (or actually becomes costly). The typical solution for this is to take the first box of a run and compare it to a template of what it should look like. However, the defects are tough to detect, and hasty measurements can cause entire box runs to be thrown out. Avanceon has crafted an off-line solution that ensures a single box matches exactly to a pre-loaded image. Immediate visual feedback is provided so that the system can be stopped prior to an entire SKU running with incorrect print.
In short, Discrete Manufacturing occurs in every market segment. Boxes, cell phones, computer, books, and all packaging of food, pharmaceutical, and other consumer products are the result of Discrete Manufacturing. Avanceon is adept at delivering a progressive and integrated solution to those unique challenges.