Brandt will soon open Western Canada’s largest fully automated ‘smart factory’ in north Regina.
hey say that fortune favours the bold. If true, then the Brandt Group of Companies has sent an unmistakeable message to Canada’s manufacturing sector: a commitment to advanced manufacturing technologies on a scale never previously seen in Western Canada.
The Regina-based industrial manufacturer now boasts one of the largest fully automated smart factories in the country, decked out with state-of-the-art machinery new to this part of the country and with unique capabilities that impress its new handlers
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“It’s like night and day from when I first started (at Brandt) in terms of growth and complexity,” explained Brandt’s Engineering Manager, Dan Bonnet, P.Eng. “What we have here now is pretty special.”
Going back three or four years, automation at Brandt meant what it could provide to its customers for automated systems. Internally, the company started incorporating automation by bringing in robotic welders. Bonnet said this smart factory is “the next generation for us.”
“The high-precision technologies we’ve brought on-stream give us significant capacity to automate, allowing us to create safer, more efficient and productive manufacturing processes. Our customers will be the big winners here.”
With Brandt continuing to expand its reach into custom manufacturing for rail, mining, construction and pipe industries, in addition to its roots in agriculture, developing the new smart factory was critical for the company. The new plant plays a central role in securing the company’s ability to maintain technological leadership in its various business categories while delivering increased value for its customers.
Unique capabilities
Located on Brandt’s North Regina Works campus, the smart factory is a state-of-the-art facility, both in terms of the technology and machinery found inside and for what it is capable of doing.
There are three TL5040 10-kilowatt fibre lasers from Trumpf GmbH + Co., all connected to an 18-tower STOPA storage system that houses 375 storage locations. Two of the lasers are connected to PartMaster semi-automated sorting stations that convey materials to the operator to sort, while the third laser employs a fully automated SortMaster to pick and stack parts.
The wattage of the machines also is unique, as is the speed at which it can cut through steel.
This new equipment has a lot more cutting power, plus it’s easier on the environment. Its energy consumption is about one-third what the older technology was, meaning lasers can last a lot longer between service intervals.
As a result, the new system delivers much higher uptime capacity versus older lasers (that required an advanced overhaul approximately every 2,000 hours) virtually eliminating potential production delays.
Additionally, the system has the capacity to hold more than four million pounds of plate inventory, with every pound of that steel accessible by automation.
The new facility is also home to three of four new press brakes.
“We didn’t used to have the capacity to cut sheets for plates. Now, we’re at the stage where we have three lasers, all automated and connected,” explains Brandt’s Director of Plant Design, Darren Borstmayer, P.Eng.. “This is a fully integrated storage and retrieval system that does all material handling for you.”
With the new system, material is stored in a vertical storage system before it’s picked and placed automatically. It can then be tracked and traced throughout the entire process from raw plate to finished part.
When a job is released, the system will bring down that piece of steel and automatically feed the laser system. When the laser finishes cutting the sheet, the system will then pick the cut sheet and transfer it to one of the three sorting destinations; manual, semi-automated or fully automated. All of this material handling is done while the laser works in parallel on its next job, creating exceptional uptime and efficiency. To top it off, the system can deliver the automatically sorted parts directly to the press brake where the parts are easily accessed and formed into their final shape.
In the past, there would be several touches or human interventions required to cut and form a part from a sheet of steel. Today, nobody needs to touch a part until it is cut and sorted, ready to be delivered to the customer.
“The entire operation is a sequence of events … like a chain,” Bonnet said. “Every link in that chain has to do its part to make sure customer timelines are met.”
Some assembly required
To ensure that Brandt had state-of-the-art capacity to support the industry, it reached out to leading German industrial machine manufacturing specialist Trumpf, to provide machine tools, laser technology and electronics for the new smart factory.
From there, it was all hands on deck when it came time to bring all of the pieces together.
Brandt called upon engineers from their various departments – civil, structural, mechanical, plant design and IT, all of whom played a role in expanding the building, renovating the facility and piecing the machinery together.
According to Trumpf, up to 90 per cent of service-related activities can be solved remotely with this equipment configuration, ensuring uninterrupted service for Brandt customers.
“It is a beautiful facility to look at. You walk in and there are bright, shiny floors and tons of natural light. The last thing you’re thinking is this is an industrial plant that is cranking out tons of steel every day,” Borstmayer said. “It would be quite different than the typical steel-cutting plant that you are used to seeing.”
Speedier, safer and more consistent
“If you try to manually load and unload sheets (of steel) these days, you’re going to lose capacity,” explained Brandt Manufacturing Engineer, Chris Dornstauder, P.Eng. “Within 30 seconds, we can change from one sheet or a certain thickness or cut to the beginning of the next one. We can keep up with the lasers and their speed.”
The connectivity of components has been a game changer. Prior to the new automated system, staff would manually program tooling pieces for certain jobs, meaning operators may not be using the same tooling from part to part.
“You could never quite get consistency. But now that we’re doing it online, we can make the programs, we can guarantee the features are going to be precisely what they’re supposed to be,” Borstmayer said. “The press brakes have laser-controlled bend angles so we can guarantee repeatability. That’s a leap forward, for sure.”
When it comes to safety for staff, the less interaction humans have with tens of thousands of pounds of body-crushing steel plates, the better.
“In this business, safety is always a major focus,” Dornstauder said. “With machines now automatically moving the millions of pounds of steel around the plant, it significantly reduces the danger to our employees.”
The technology allows technicians to service the equipment without having to shut down the systems. The laser is completely enclosed and the subsequent fumes and dust particles from cuts are extracted.
The future starts now
“What we have now is a strong foundation for us to build upon,” Bonnet said of the smart factory. “Five to 10 years from now, we’re still going to be building on this. This is the base and we can build it from here.”
Added Dornstauder, “Everything is connected and can talk to each other; we have that ability now. Factories used to be dark and dingey and now they’re bright and clean and all of the pieces of equipment can talk to each other.”
“It’s like switching from checkers to chess,” Dornstauder said. “There’s a lot more at play. You have to be thinking ahead and you have to make sure you’re making the right moves.”
“There are a lot of provisions for a future state. We designed a lot of options to make use of more automated sorting and robotic implementation. The technology is changing at such a rapid pace that it won’t be too long before the next steps are feasible and useful to us.”