Surprise your customer, or good things happen when you automate

Sitting at lunch with an injection molder last week during the Technology Days event at Arburg, and I asked him what the most impressive thing was that he saw during the event. The first item he mentioned was a vision inspection system from Intravis that was running as part of a molding cell with a72-cavity KTW closure mold. The speed of the Q/A system impressed him and he knew he could use it for some of his own projects. 

The other highlight for him was the automation Arburg had on display, mostly its own Multilift-brand units but also ones from Kuka and Hekuma. Then he told me his automation story, but asked not to be identified. His small company molds, among other parts, a flag that is shipped to a large greenhouse that labels them and sticks into plant pots. Good project, nice customer and for years the flags had been free dropping onto a conveyor and then falling into a box, which was closed, labeled and shipped.

Then his company added a robot to the molding cell, and the robot began laying the flags 'just so' in the boxes. Turns out the processor was able to save big on boxes and shipping, as the robot's precise placement saved space in each box. 

But the real bonus was that his customer, the greenhouse owner, saw that "the ladies" who attached labels to the flags and stuck them into plant pots were able to triple their output. The customer couldn't thank his injection molder enough, and all the molder could do was smile, nod his head and recognize that his customer's increased satisfaction vastly outweighed the small savings his own company had reaped.