Abstract At the plant of Outokumpu Stainless Tubular Products AB in Molkom a wide range of butt weld fittings are produced. These are aimed mainly for the process industries and one of the products are ninety degree bend elbows in various dimensions. The elbows are made from stainless sheet metal and when formed to a tube they need to be welded along its inner radius. This is made by a pick and place type industrial robot working in a closed compartment. The assignment given by Outokumpu aims to investigate and suggest a new concept for a more reliable manufacturing process within the work cell.   The cell consists of five main areas chronologically listed as passed by the elbow: ·          Automated, vibrating conveyor.·          Fixture with the purpose to serve the robot with one elbow at a time, placed in the correct position.·          Industrial robot to pick up the elbow and drag it along the welding head.·          TIG inverter with a stationary welding head·          A hydraulic press with a template of the final shape of the elbow corrects flaws. Almost every problem in the cell and defects on the products coming out of it can be traced back to the fixture and in some cases also to the robots pick up tooling. The focus of the task was therefore put mainly on those two areas. As the work proceeded Outokumpu chose to develop a new tool for the robot themselves which they did with good results. I chose to incorporate it into my study and change focus to the fixture instead.   The problems and possible causes to them were identified and discussed with my tutor: The elbows fall incorrectly into or beside of the fixture.  Fixtures are old and worn down. The elbows path between conveyor and fixture are somewhat out of control The smaller dimensions have room enough to slip past the fixture. Edges to be welded are to far from each other or badly shaped Commissioning time, some start up steps is more complex then they need to be. Some of the setting possibilities in the working cell are unnecessary and can be fixed instead. The positions of pick up and welding head are not really fixed in the robot software, these are reprogrammed every time elbow size are changed. ·          Various errors at weldingo    Robot managed to pick incorrectly placed elbow   Proposals to solve the above specified problems: All parts in contact with the elbows are to be made of harden able steel. A suitable one is C45E which can be casehardened to about 700HV. On the outer edge of the conveyer a support are placed to prevent excessive wear. The fixture is partially redesigned with a support to control the elbows path better. Guide arms with dual purpose are added. First they guide the elbow into the fixture and secondly they turn it to the correct angle towards the robot. Pins are used along with quick lock clamps to obtain faster and easier commissioning. The pick and place tool developed by Outokumpu are used.

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Bakgrunden till examensarbetet är att det finns ett behov av att höja utnyttjandegraden i stans- och lasermaskiner hos Lars Höglund AB. Anledningen till att utnyttjandegraden behöver höjas är att företaget vill bli mera lönsamt och mera konkurrenskraftigt. Uppgiften har varit att mäta utnyttjandegraden, göra en probleminventering och ta fram förslag på åtgärder som kan lösa de problem som kom fram i probleminventeringen. Vid probleminventeringen visade det sig att det går att höja utnyttjandegraden genom att bl.a. göra en ställtidsreducering, skapa ordning och reda, samt att förebygga flaskhalsar. 5S är en metod som har använts för att ta fram förbättringsåtgärderna. Genom att följa denna metod, samt att göra några nya investeringar i företaget, ser det ut som att målet i detta arbete ska kunna uppnås.

In order to accomplish that a construction is correctly built, it is critical to obtain a well functioning control mechanism throughout the project. The way to enable this is not by having an independent inspector constantly at your side. Today it is praxis to use check lists and have people responsible of quality to make sure that these are followed. This is where discretionary inspections play their part. These among others are documents needed to com-plete the check list. Documented discretionary inspections are based on a control mechanism that allows the entrepreneurs to, in their own organizations, self check the performed task, and by that ensure that the quality of each task is executed in a satisfying way. Due to the fact that most projects today are suffering by lack of time during construction, it is most likely to presume that the discretionary inspections can fall out of the priority, be performed in an unsatisfying way or not be performed at all. However, experience from construction business tells us that calculated energy consumption often differs from the actual, once the building is completed. This anomaly strikes hardest to apartment blocks and therefore we intend to find a connection between poorly executed dis-cretionary inspections and high energy usage. Discretionary inspections are used by most contractors in the construction business to ensure that the work in progress always serves en-vironmental lines of thoughts. During the progress in our writing we have achieved a good insight in routines and how the business works, for good and for bad. The report finishes with a discussion considering the overall concept of discretionary inspections, how to improve them and potential ways of supporting the concept in the future.

This report summarizes a Bachelor Degree Project in Integrated Product Development,carried out during the spring semester in 2007 by three students at the Product Design Engineering programme at the University of Skövde. The project was performed as an assignment for KinBag ab, a sister subsidiary to Kinnegrip ab in Lidköping, who develop,manufacture and market the golf bag KinBag, a bag with an integrated wheel carriage system. The purpose of the project was to redesign the golf bag to attract a target group consisting of golfers aged between 20 and 40. The layout of the project was as follows: The project began with a feasibility study where different problems were identified with the basis of a market research which eventually was summarized in a dynamic specification of requirements. The feasibility study was followed by a generation of ideas which contained everything from sketches to simple mock-ups with an intensive amount of thoughtful brainwork and information gathering in between. This led to the development of a number of design concepts, both on an overall level and on different parts of the golf bag. Even more detailed models were created and visualized in a three dimensional environment by means of a CAD program. The report portrays the product design process and methods utilized in the project, as well as the final result - a full-scale operational prototype of the new generation of KinBag.

The design work that precedes the automation of a process is not an easy job. Each one of the variables and possible risks involved in process must be carefully considered before implement the final design as well the requirements in performance and cost. However automate a dangerous, inefficient or just uncomfortable task entails many benefits that make up for the long period of design process. A well automated line will benefit the production with quality, productivity and capacity among other profits. In this project the immediate objective is to automate the “SANDFLEX Hacksaw blades” packaging process in the plant that SNAEurope owns in Lidköping. Actually the packing is completely manual. One operator packs the blades into the boxes meanwhile one more operator loads and unloads the packing station with empty and full boxes respectively. The task is both, tiring and uncomfortable for the operators as well inefficient for the company since the production rate is limited. Analyzing and observing carefully product and process, different theories and strategies to achieve the goal were developed. Three are the possible solutions to solve the problem, with different levels of automation and technologies. The robotic solution uses an articulated robot to perform all the tasks; the hybrid solution uses pneumatic devices to pack the blades and an articulated robot to support the station loading and unloading the boxes. Finally the pneumatic solution uses only pneumatic devices, which hold, open and close, push box and blades using airpower; a few sensors detect positions and states, since a PLC coordinates and controls all process. By means of discussing these solutions with the company’s engineers and workers, after a deep literature study and two test of performance, was it possible to select the most suitable solution to accomplish the packaging task. The pneumatic solution is cheap and simple, but at the same time robust and reliable. This design performs the packaging task efficiently and fast. And more important, the operator passes from pack manually the blades to monitor the process.

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This final thesis was performed at Ecole Nationale Supériure D’Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) in Lille, France. The aim of the thesis has been to use two different simulation tools to analyse an existing production cell with focus on industrial engineering. The possible use and the usability of the simulation tools are also studied. The models built for simulation have been used to gather data about the cell. After analyse and discussion about the data we came to the following conclusions. The bottleneck in the cell is the Stäubli. A cheap and simple way to improve the cell is by adding new decision points (sensors) to it. The most efficient location of the new decision points is before and after the Stäubli. The production rate reaches its maximum rate for both settings with eight pallets. If the improvements are implemented then there is no reason to change the speed of the conveyor. With basic settings the speed can be increased for better productivity. The most efficient production type for short setup times is single, for both settings. Delmia is useful for visual representation. It’s also useful for measurements of time and distance since the accuracy is very high. Delmia is useful as common platform when to discuss and explain thoughts and ideas about a project. Flow simulation in Quest provides a great understanding of the production and the behaviour of the cell. It is very easy to get data in and out of the program and to compare results and impacts of changes.

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The machining operations that shape a metal component produce a raised edge or small pieces of material remaining attached to a work piece called burrs and sharp edges. The deburring process is intended to remove these imperfections and produce specific edge profiles. Burr formation during machining operations is one of the most significant problems encountered by industrial companies in component manufacturing. Remaining burrs after machining pose a severe risk for component breakdowns, if the burrs get loose. All work piece edges must therefore be completely defect-free. In the machining industry manual methods are commonly employed for burr removal. Fully automating deburring operations present a major challenge. Furthermore, removal of internal burrs of various sizes and shapes from parts sometimes becomes an extremely difficult task which causes high cost for labor, time losses, and health and safety risks. Increasingly, manufacturers are expected to deliver burr-free parts to their customer. Sandvik Coromant, Scania and Volvo Cars are three of these manufacturers, and these three companies have agreed to contribute to this thesis. Sandvik Coromant AB is part of the global enterprise Sandvik Group AB, and is world- leading in providing and developing cutting tools for the metal working industry. The company operates in over 60 countries worldwide and its main production plant is located in Gimo, Sweden [www.sandvik.com]. Scania is a global automotive industry manufacturer of commercial vehicles—specifically heavy trucks and buses. It also manufactures diesel engines for motive power of heavy vehicles, marine, and general industrial applications. Scania was founded in 1891 in Södertälje, Sweden. Today, Scania has ten production facilities worldwide [www.scania.com]. Volvo Car Corporation is an automobile manufacturer founded in 1927, in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Cars has approximately 2,300 local dealers and around 100 national sales companies worldwide. Volvo Car Engine is a part of Volvo Cars. Volvo Car Engine produces engines and other components for other units, and it is headquartered in Skövde, Sweden [www.volvocars.com]. All of the companies above have problems in burr minimizing and removing strategy in machining and deburring operations to achieve quality assurance. Therefore, to choose a deburring system, and to reveal the results of deburring operations, it is necessary to be able to inspect/measure burrs. But, unfortunately, most industrial companies today lack the specialized systems to measure the presence of burrs, which adversely affect the overall deburring process. In this thesis, different types and sizes of work pieces have been taken directly from the production to measure burrs, and conduct experiments on them. The thesis focuses on three areas: A survey of the current deburring problems, including burr classification and measurement, current minimization strategies of burr formation, and current deburring methods. Experiments on new and improved deburring methods, including deburring tools (e.g. drilling deburring tools, countersink tools, grinding tools and alumina fiber brushes), water-jet deburring (multi-nozzle rotary lance jets, pure and abrasive single rotary nozzle water jets). A selection matrix as a thesis conclusion which relates these methods to criteria of deburring processes, such as process performance, industrial applications, quality assurance, safety and environment, costs, etc. This matrix can be a basis for a more detailed selection/decision matrix in the future. / QC 20101203