Melnor Incorporated is a high end manufacturer of lawn and garden watering
devices. Melnor had issues with product conveyance through their manufacturing
line. The biggest issue being that the output rate of an existing bending
machine was much higher than that of the next in the process, an insertion
machine. This created an inherent bottleneck throughout the line.
Solution
The first step was to design and build a conveyor system to evacuate parts
from the faster existing machine. The conveyor system allowed us to create
a buffer of parts. Next, DVF integrated two robots on the line and Melnor
manufactured and additional insertion machine. The robots remove product
from the conveyor
and load the insertion machines. These upgrades removed the bottleneck and
essentially doubled the production output.