Brandon Medical is a world-leading designer and manufacturer of SMART turnkey equipment for acute care areas. They manufacture High-tech Medical Lighting, Medical Power & Control Systems and Medical Audio-Visual Systems used in operating theatres, critical care units and clinics in over 70 countries around the world.
Brandon Medical engaged with Robotas Technologies to develop a Smart Workcell to optimise their assembly process and enhance the data capture capability of their complex operating theatre lamp head units; all within a clean room assembly environment.
The requirements – Ergonomics, system integration and traceability data
Brandon Medical’s requirements for their Smart Workcell were to:
- Safeguard the quality of products produced.
- Improve the ergonomics for their assembly operators’ build process and reduce manual lifting during assembly.
- Reduce the setup required by assembly operatives.
- Automated integration of programmable torque screwdrivers within their build instructions, with result logging.
- Reduce the process flow between first stage build, quality testing and final assembly.
- Eliminate all paper-based work instructions and in-process checks.
- Automatically log all production data (including any ‘Not Right First Time’ build results) and record all production data for traceability purposes.
- Reduce the level of training needed for new operators.
A demonstration of tool control and integration with Sigma Assembly guided work instruction. Sigma is controlling the Kolve K Ducer during this assembly process and checks for a correctly made fixing.
Creating a solution
Robotas and Brandon Medical collaborated to design an Ergonomic Workbench for operators, specifically designed to suit the size and build needs for their Lamp Head Units.
Robotas’ Sigma software was the perfect platform to give Brandon Medical’s assembly operators step-by-step work instructions to simplify and standardise their build process.
Throughout the build process operators now scan the barcodes of works orders, serial numbers and material batch codes to log data.
At the correct build process step, the Sigma system interfaces with ‘Kolver’ programable torque screwdrivers to set the driver’s torque settings for each individual screw. Sigma software then records the torque and bolt angle results for each bolt. This data is logged against the serial number of the product being built.
All build information data, including the results of any in-process quality checks, are logged and a ‘Product Birth Certificate’ is generated using Sigma’s Reporting functionality. All Product Birth Certificates are stored on Brandon Medical’s servers giving full traceability. Brandon now also has the reporting ability to easily search this data if needed.
Because the build process involves the Lamp Units to be soak tested part way through their build, Robotas designed a portable, ergonomic, motorised height adjustable storage trolley that enables operators to safely move large lamp head units onto a storage rack, which they use to move multiple units to the Soak Test Area, and back to the workbench after the testing is complete.
The results
- Removal of Paper Documentation including Serial Number Logging in Pen.
- Full Traceability of all products built and the ability to drill into any dataset.
- Flexible Workforce. Operators no longer need to be specifically trained to build a certain product. They just follow the Sigma work instructions, step by step.
- Quality Process Improvements. Supervisors no longer need to manually check the torque values of all bolts, or that the serial numbers have been logged correctly because Sigma logs this data at the build stage.
- Manual Handling Improvements.
Brandon Medical won the Innovation Category at ‘MAKE UK’s Regional 2020 Manufacturing Awards for the development and implementation of their Smart Workcell.