Eyeglass lens production is an Industry 4.0 application field par excellence: the industrial manufacture of one-off items within a few hours up to now-delivery, with the highest demands on quality, technology and cost. Against this backdrop, the state of the art in automation has now been surpassed: for the first time, around 2,500 customer orders = 5,000 lenses per day, with 30% express orders, are produced in under 4.5 hours throughput time by just 10 employees per shift in three-shift operation.
This is made possible by S4P solutions such as automated real-time fine planning of the orders handed over by the ERP/LMS, automated JIT/JIS retrieval of trays from automated warehouses and their manual loading supported by mobile barcode/RFID scanner devices, the writing of smart RFID tags on the workpiece carriers, real-time control of the now-intelligent conveyor systems, and integrated control of Universal Robots. Intelligent sensors locate and monitor the position of trays. All machines are connected to the MES and communicate in real time. In addition, operators have been given intelligent assistance systems that enable seamless monitoring, control and quality assurance.
All in all, these innovative I4.0 technologies can be applied in any other industry as well. Simply get in touch with us about this.