Since 2016, premium manufacturer Scania has been assembling customized truck cabs to order – and doing so almost exclusively with the aid of 288 robots. "It's completely clear to me that a premium product needs to be built in a premium plant," explains Marcus Holm, Plant Manager in Cab Body Production at Scania in Oskarshamn. "The high degree of automation results in excellent quality, as well as good working conditions and ergonomics for our operators," he adds.
The robots place the panel parts on the joining stations and weld them. All the employees have to do is load the stations and monitor the machines. In any case, Swedish occupational health and safety regulations have made it impossible to use hand-held welding equipment. On the one hand, welding tools have become too heavy and unwieldy, while on the other hand occupational safety directives require a minimum distance between the welding gun and the operator because of radiation.
The banning of manual welding from the assembly workshop has benefited Scania in two ways: "It means better processes and quality," explains Lars Kreutner, Project Leader Cab Body Production at Scania in Oskarshamn. To make full use of the automation technology, Scania has set up a training division where employees learn how to use the robots and automation technology.
All the trucks that Scania builds weigh more than 16 tons. The company has built a reputation as a manufacturer of special vehicles for fire services or waste collection, for example. These niche markets alone account for hundreds of thousands of variants.
"It may surprise people to learn that we offer even more customization options for trucks than there are in passenger car production," says Evert Forsberg, Automation and Electrical Engineer in the press shop and body shop at Scania. In passenger car production, every vehicle type has its own assembly line. "We, on the other hand, assemble all of the cabs that Scania supplies on a single assembly line," says Forsberg.