Scanner can complete 4 scans per second
Productivity has risen as the furniture producer’s cycle time is 6 seconds.
Renowned as the world’s largest wooden furniture producer, IKEA Industry, an integrated part of Inter IKEA Group, manufactures more than 100 million furniture pieces worldwide annually. To achieve successful order fulfillment, it is critical for the producer to optimize its production processes. With this in mind, Ikea Industry Slovakia decided to automate its packing processes, which were performed manually before.
To do so, it initiated a pilot project, which sought to develop and implement a modular and universal robotic cell for furniture parts packaging. Its boards (each weighing up to 48.5 pounds) come in stacks and need to be placed into packing boxes that are moving on a conveyor belt.
The required cycle time was 6 seconds, which—together with the heavy weight of the boards—posed a great challenge for employees who were performing the task manually during 8-hour shifts. As a result, the facility approached a robotic vision and intelligence provider to create a solution that would automate the entire process.
“The project demanded the development of a localization system that had not existed in this form yet,” says Anton Dvorák, project manager at the manufacturing facility. “We had a request that this cell would manage 10 cycles per minute with a placement accuracy of ±0.08 inches.”
Consequently, the final solution (covered by one vision system) needed to master several challenges, given the required cycle time, high placement accuracy, industrial environment and various materials of the boards, which range from shiny to diffused or from black to white. Moreover, the boards are available in stacks with a deviation of ±5.9 inches.
Based on its best-in-class resolution/speed ratio, Ikea Industry Slovakia chose a PhoXi 3D Scanner. Able to make four scans per second—providing 3.2 million 3D points in each one—the scanner is available in five models (XS to XL), each of which is suitable for a different scanning range. The specific solution developed for Ikea Industry Slovakia actually deploys models S and XL.
Additionally, the final localization system consists of a two-step strategy. First, each board is scanned by the scanner to acquire its preliminary position; after, the scanner locates the best candidate to pick, as the picking action is performed by a 7-axis robot. As a vacuum gripper (with another scanner mounted on it) approaches the board, a second scan is completed, which localizes the board more precisely. This second localization is aimed to compensate for any potential error of the first vision system or of the robot or gripper.
Due to the implementation of this solution, productivity has increased, as the final solution reached a cycle time of 6 seconds. Costs have declined, while safety has increased, as employees don’t need to manually handle heavy boards any longer.
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