Genesis’s virtual solutions helped expertly automate and quickly deploy challenging agricultural equipment manufacturing processes.
Great Plains Manufacturing, an agriculture equipment manufacturer, needed a unique robotic welding solution to reduce their time to market as well as their overall production costs.
The company began as a small shop in Salina, Kansas, and has grown into one of the largest privately-held manufacturers in their industry. They understood that as their company continues to grow, automation is essential to remain competitive and strengthen their growth potential.
The Challenge
Great Plains Manufacturing had complex production schedules that were not easily automated. Their production runs were between 5 and 1,000 pieces, with cycle times from 10 seconds to 60 minutes. It wasn’t unusual for them to produce 30 product lines in one month. The amount of tooling this required posed significant obstacles to the efficiency and cost benefits of robotic automation.
The Solution
Genesis leveraged virtual solutions for proof of concept, design and process prior to building or implementing the system. Virtual solutions simulate successful automation to ensure that mistakes and inefficiencies aren’t built into the system.
Virtual solutions for robotic welding included 3D simulation of welding processes, 3D immersive virtual environment simulations and reach studies to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the proposed automation system.
The Results
Leveraging their in-house Virtual Solutions Center, Genesis was able to provide Great Plains with a clear understanding of the proposed robotic welding system. Together they were able to make the necessary tweaks to fine tune the system. Using the virtual system design, Great Plains was able to develop the custom tooling they needed in-house, and prepare offline programming, all while Genesis was building the system.
The result was a streamlined integration project that saw the system fully operational on the very same day it was implemented.
Great Plains Manufacturing received a custom robotic welding solution that helped improve their time to market and speed of production, ultimately increasing their competitiveness in the agriculture equipment manufacturing space.
