SMD Tower Intelligent material handling
A modern, near-production
storage system
The SMD Tower is an automated, highly flexible and expandable buffer storage unit designed for deployment near the production line. In the SMD Tower, the right component is in the right place in a controlled environment – ready for quick and smooth changeovers in your SMT line. You can even store your most frequently used components with an Agilis feeder attached!
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No more mix-ups
Regardless of whether you need a single reel or tray, or need to automatically process a complete kitting list, the system records every movement. It keeps track of all stored reels and component quantities automatically. A unique identification code ensures that the right component is always provided or stored, making mix-ups almost impossible. Return-to-storage is just as quick and convenient.
Compact near-production storage
The SMD Tower closes a gap in flexible SMD manufacturing, where up until now reels had to be physically found and retrieved, one at a time, from space-consuming and inflexible storage systems. The SMD Tower needs barely one square meter of floor space to store up to 658 reels, and it can be integrated into existing material handling systems.
Challenge
Running high-mix production is labor-intensive. Much time is needed to handle the flow of materials needed for frequent setups and changeovers. Komatsu Electronics were experiencing high costs related to their material handling. In addition, they were spending a lot of time hunting down missing material, causing pick-and-place machine downtime.
Solution
Komatsu are now running a suite of 16 SMD Towers that support activities in different segments of their production. All 16 towers are located in the same group, to enable simultaneous storage and retrieval of components. This enables the customer to reduce picking time to a minimum when preparing a new job.
Result
Komatsu has experienced significant improvements since introducing the SMD Towers. Material storage and retrieval man-hours have been reduced from 90 seconds per part to 4 seconds per part, resulting in an overall saving of 4600 man-hours per year. In addition, their pick-and-place machine downtime resulting from searches for materials has been reduced by 57% – from 75 minutes per line and day to 32 minutes per line and day.
200 2000 615-7 615-15 Max capacity 546 658 812 812 Footprint (m²) 1.07 1.07 1.46 1.59 6150-7 6150-15 8000 Max capacity 980 980 1148 Footprint (m²) 1.46 1.59 1.59