Managing the complexity of
many variants
Separate assembly lines and job changeovers on-the-fly
are somewhat unusual for a 50
person company. But not for the special machine builder BDG in southern Germany, who
combines modern management methods with efficient electric drives and servopneumatic
technology from Festo.
Testing pipe plugs with servopneumatics and proportional technology
Modern management:
Separate assembly
lines for every new installation.
trends in automation
Synergies
22
–
23
M
aximum flexibility is the name
of the game for BDG when
building customer specific
systems. Their test and
production systems consist of individual
modules, so that end users can easily
respond to market changes by
reconfiguring the systems and increasing
capacity. “Only in this way can we be true
to our motto ‘The future belongs to the
flexible’,” says Lars Brenner, Head of
Organisation and Administration at BDG.
The best example of this is the new BDG
assembly and test machine for the
production of pipe plugs for valves. The
machine’s flexibility ensures it can be
used to produce many variants of pipe
plugs. On a single machine, the upper and
lower parts of the pipe plugs are brought
together, pressed, laser welded and
finally tested to ensure the welds are free
of leaks. The speed of the process steps
results in a very short cycle time.
Job changeovers on-the-fly
“For our customers, this machine
represents a huge productivity gain”, says
Brenner. “Up to now, they may have used
several semi automated machines for