PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT OF A MACHINING AREA THROUGH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AUTOMATED HANDLING SYSTEM

FPT Industrial is one of the main partners of IVECO GROUP producing powertrain components for on- and off-road vehicles and marine applications. In the Turin Driveline plant, front and rear axles are machined and assembled. Following the trend of material handling automatization, the plant is carrying out many initiatives for robotic arms implementation in many stations of the machining area. This initiative aims to improve productivity by tackling the losses due to loading/unloading operations. In this work, a new initiative is carried out in the New Daily Axle production line, in the machining area of the arms of the rear axle boxes. Even if the team already has much experience in automatized handling systems, every new implementation is always a challenge. The first two chapters present an introduction of the FPT plant in Turin, a general overview of the products and processes, its customers, and the methodologies applied when a new initiative is started: from the analysis to the approval of the investment, the preliminary and detailed design phase which led to the selection of the supplier company. The third chapter describes the start of the new initiative and the analysis performed in the first phase to choose the proper stations according to the aim of the initiative and the possibility to implement an automated handling system such as a robotic pick-and-place arm. In the fourth chapter, the team must face the preliminary and detailed design. In the preliminary design step, the team must describe the main requirements of the new working isle to start the call for tenders. The product of the preliminary design step is shared with two companies that will carry out their best offers. After a technical and economic comparison, the supplier company is chosen, and the detailed design step is started. The fifth chapter represents the last two phases of the installation, the construction and testing phase of the newly supplied equipment, and the installation and ramp-up phase in the FPT axles machining plant. The last chapter carries some closing considerations on the project and methodologies applied, and the lessons learned for future implementations.