Production measurement technology in the Smart factory

As pump manufacturer Wilo planned its sustainable and digital Smart factory, the quality assurance department strategically repositioned itself: Thanks to production measurement technology supplied by Klostermann, it now acts preventively - and production waste has fallen to almost zero.

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At 30 m long, it is impossible to miss at the Wilopark, the Wilo Group's headquarters in Dortmund: The H2Powerplant hydrogen plant, which uses electrolysis to convert electricity generated from sun, wind and water into green hydrogen. The system solution can store 520 kg of hydrogen, which the company installed as a pilot plant last year - and now also offers customers as the basis for a self-sufficient, decentralized and regenerative energy supply network. "Sustainability has always been practiced throughout the company. Sustainability and quality management are the responsibility of one department at Wilo, because both only work holistically," explains Tim Schirmers, Plant Quality Manager Dortmund at Wilo. "On the product side, this starts with development and continues through to production and recycling. In addition, the tolerances of the individual components across the entire value stream - regardless of whether they are electronic components, metal or plastic components - are becoming ever tighter so that the pumps and pump systems ultimately achieve higher energy efficiency."

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Schirmers continues: "In this respect, there was no question for us that we wanted to gear quality management and metrology completely towards sustainability and digitalization when planning the new Smart factory. The new factory has opened up completely new possibilities for us: Away from pure reaction towards preventative quality assurance and towards reliability management."

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Quality Management was therefore involved in the planning of the Smart Factory at an early stage and developed a new strategy that makes use of digitalization: metrology is now also moving to the production line. The tolerances are measured by the employees in production. All measuring machines - both in the measuring room and in production - send their data to central servers or to the Wilo cloud. The aim is to make it clear at an early stage if production processes are getting out of hand. Once this strategy was in place, Schirmers' team set about implementing it: "We had already worked in partnership with Klostermann in the past and the company won the tender," says Schirmers happily.

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The Remscheid-based full-service provider for 3D-metrology supplied Wilo with its first measuring machine more than 30 years ago; and it recently even commissioned its 1000th new machine at Wilo. "The close proximity to Klostermann is very helpful for us: Whenever we need help - be it with implementations, training, creating programs, repairs, measuring devices or even contract measuring tasks - the experts from Klostermann are always quickly on hand. They even help out here on site in the event of unforeseen staff shortages. This overall package makes the collaboration very efficient," says Schirmers. "What's more, Klostermann has developed a deep understanding of our requirements and processes over the years."

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It was important for Schirmers to dovetail the metrology in the Smart factory closely with the metrology in the measuring room. This meant that the new measuring machines for the store floor had to run under WM Quartis, the measuring software from Wenzel. Wilo has also been using Wenzel in the measuring room for a long time. Wilo therefore opted for the coordinate measuring machines from the manufacturer in Wiesthal. The choice fell on three SF 55s, designed for the direct production environment. "We also wanted three coordinate measuring machines from Wenzel on the store floor to ensure consistency and therefore comparability of the data," says Schirmers. "We can now send the data from the measuring room, i.e. measurement data and measurement programs, directly to the machines in production. Standardization also has the advantage that the worker in production can switch to a different coordinate measuring machine in no time at all if we have a peak at one point."

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Flexible clamping systems from Witte were implemented as measuring devices: "Now the worker inserts a component, selects a measuring program at the touch of a button - and the machine does what it is supposed to do. And we receive the measurement and test data in consistent quality," explains Schirmers.

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Klostermann also provided a further boost to Wilo's production measurement technology by integrating the Equator testing device from Renishaw into the metrology landscape: "We had already purchased two Equators for workpiece testing directly from Renishaw, but didn't really know how to exploit their potential," recalls Schirmers. "In the course of planning the Smart Factory, Klostermann gave us the idea of operating the Equator with WM Quartis instead of the Renishaw software. This meant that we were able to standardize further here too. This was a game changer for us, as we can now define the measuring points - i.e. shape and position tolerances - from the measuring room that are to be checked with the Equator with regard to IO/NIO. To do this, the worker takes a defined random sample from the line and checks it with the Equator; this takes just three minutes." Due to these advantages, Wilo subsequently put three more Equators out to tender.

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Before the new measuring concept was implemented, Klostermann thoroughly tested the situation on its own measuring machines in four test series at its premises in Remscheid. Questions such as: Is the concept even feasible? Can we also use it to carry out a measurement system analysis (MSA) so that the values are reliable and reproducible?

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Using stored control charts, the workers in the Smart factory are now informed via the WM Quartis measuring software interface on the coordinate measuring machines from Wenzel and via the Renishaw inspection devices whether the tolerances of components are running away. If production fails to take countermeasures in good time, Schirmers' team is informed by e-mail via several built-in escalation cascades. Schirmers: "The trends mean we are always one step ahead and can make decisions: Does a production machine need to be corrected, for example? Does maintenance need to be carried out? In the past, we could only react when components were already NOK."

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The digital information flow of measurement and test results not only includes quality assurance, but also the production manager and engineering, who can adapt the design of components if problems frequently occur. Colleagues at other Wilo plants, for which the Dortmund site measures components as a service provider, also have access to the quality data via the cloud.

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"The tolerances are getting tighter, the quantities larger. Today, it pays off that we have become faster and more effective in measuring and testing technology by integrating it into the production processes," summarizes Schirmers. "As a result, we have increased product quality, improved the stability of production processes and reduced the waste that we have fed into our recycling center by 50%. This naturally contributes to our sustainability strategy, as we can now correct production processes, for example in CNC machining or injection molding, much more quickly thanks to the close process monitoring via metrology . Our key figures prove this: We have to scrap less, recycle less and we achieve higher customer satisfaction."

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Other Wilo plants are now also interested in the Smart Factory QM concept: colleagues at the new high-tech factory in Changzhou, China, have already signaled their interest in the solution. And at the Wilopark in Dortmund, they are already working on using artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the measurement and test results, with the help of students from TU Dortmund University. Schirmers: "The first tests were very promising."

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Text: Sabine Koll / Published in Quality Engineering 04 / 2023

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