“The most important tasks for the Genesis team include creating the total concept, designing the specifications of systems and interfaces and managing the interfaces between the systems,” Hajas notes. The data needed to do so is supplied to the MES through vertical integration. One person can monitor and control the entire production process from the control room. Meanwhile, the retooling and non-value adding transport processes are fully automated, such that the robots retool the systems on their own.Īs a result, a highly agile production process has emerged which adjusts itself autonomously, depending on what needs to be produced at a given moment.ĪGVs handle the transport of materials between the cells, based on instructions provided by the MES. The result is that many different products can be simultaneously processed in the same robot cell.Ī control room enabled with ABB Ability™ Manufacturing Operation Management (MOM) helps to pick all relevant product and process information and provides a centralized and remote place for decisions, steering as well as controlling the line by one person.
“What emerges from all of this is a true digital factory,” Hajas emphasizes.Īll the systems and robots are constantly exchanging information with the higher-level ABB MES. The Genesis team aimed to use as many components from within the ABB group as practical. “The experience that we gained from this pilot installation and from cooperation with each of our partners was critical to be able to really implement the entire project,” Hajas explains. The demo comprised six ABB robots, AGVs and various special automated installations and was used to prove the technical feasibility on a smaller scale while developing new concepts from the insights obtained. To help gather know-how of such automation projects, in 2015 the newly formed team at ABB Semiconductors set about building a demonstration system. Yet despite this, one of the biggest challenges faced by Project Genesis was to automate an existing production facility, without having to excessively restrict its operation.
However, the scale of the challenge ahead was immense: the first phase comprised over 100 projects and sub-tasks, 55 robots – of which 40 were supplied by ABB, some 30 special installations and the integration into the MES of 100 existing equipment facilities. “Yet we didn’t have a general contractor who would be able to implement the entire solution for us,” Hajas notes.ĪBB Semiconductors decided that it would take on the role of general contractor. To support this idea, ABB’s higher-level control system, based on its Manufacturing Execution System (MES), was implemented. If this area can indeed be automated, couldn’t we extend it over the entire backend area of BiMOS production?” “That gave birth to an idea that would really push us in the direction of the digital factory. “An AGV is basically a riding robot which can be programmed and automated to serve as a supplier for stationary robots and systems,” Hajas explains. “In the process, we determined that many non-value adding processes, such as preparation, loading and unloading as well as transport of materials made up a considerable part of the workload.”ĭriverless transport vehicles, called automated guided vehicles (AGVs), are widely used to help automate the movement of materials in many different industries. The AGV is running ANT software from BlueBotics A mini AGV (left) transfers components to an IRB 1600 robotic arm.