Road to becoming the no. 1 robot-workshop
Fujii Kenma Co., Ltd. was founded in 1970 in Kato City, Hyogo Prefecture, and specializes in machining of metal parts for automobiles as well as agricultural and heavy machinery. With ten technicians and multiple turning and machining centers, Fujii produces a wide variety of parts according to customer needs.
To automate their existing production processes, the company invested into their first MATRIS Light robot system in May 2022. As productivity greatly improved, two additional MATRIS Light units with the Vision Camera option followed just six months later.
MATRIS Light – compact & fence-free
Mr. Akihiro Fujii, Senior Managing Director, explained the reason for the 3-part investment: „Originally, we had to divide the production processes of many products across multiple machines, and even after adding a turning center for process integration, productivity did not increase as much as we had hoped. We also encountered problems with operator illness which often made us change our plans and work overtime to meet deadlines. Introducing robots and automating production was our only chance.“
With MATRIS Light, production has doubled from about 1,500 to 3,000 units per month. The system has also eliminated manual errors and reduced the cost of training operators, allowing the company to „focus on creative work that only people can do,“ says Fujii.
Realizing 24h-automated production
Fujii Kenma utilizes MATRIS Light for the automatic transfer of a wide variety of workpieces. Although MATRIS Light was initiatelly not designed with 24 hours of continuous production in mind, the company implemented their own innovations to make it possible and maximize robot usage. One of workpiece were in-house designed as well.
„We designed this table in a way to allow the MATRIS Light cart to move under it and to make full use of the motion range of the robot arm for stacking the workpieces from the front to the back. The factory floor is slightly sloped to improve drainage, and we adjusted the height of both ends of the table several millimeters to ensure secure workpiece clamping by the robot arm“, Mr. Fujii recalls. But even if the table would be slightly misaligned, no problem. Two later units of MATRIS Light are equipped with Vision Camera as option to automatically detect the workpiece position and adjust the arm motion accordingly. And this is how Fujii Kenma‘s unique innovations together with the latest MATRIS Light functions realized uninterrupted, automatic production even during unmanned night shifts.
Training and utilizing robots for further automation
Mr. Fujii descibes the advantage of MATRIS Light with its operability, easy teaching and perfect job repeatability. „MATRIS Light gets smarter day by day, works non-stop throughout the night when people are asleep, and gets up for work again in the morning to meet its production schedule, all without demanding overtime pay. You see, I can only be grateful to MATRIS Light,“ Fujii says with a smile. In the future, Fujii hopes to increase the number of MATRIS Light to realize a production site with fully automated workpiece transfer.
And this, on the other hand, opens up time for more challenging tasks only humans can do which raises everyone‘s motivation and skills. Fujii Kenma will continue its road towards becoming the no. 1 robot-workshop and challenge themselves to further automation.
Fujii Kenma Co., Ltd.
109 Kamikume, Kato-city,
Hyogo 673-1414, Japan
www.fujiikenma.moo.jp