Holding a large order for electric vehicles, the gear factory's local

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Batom Co., Ltd. cultivated gear manufacturing for 40 years. The picture shows Batom Co., Ltd. chairman Lin Sen (middle), general manager Lin Yi Min (right) and deputy general manager Lin Yibin (left).

Batom Co., Ltd. Taiwan Gear Factory is not only the world’s largest electric car brand’s gear supplier in Taiwan, but also took the lead in creating Asia’s first two-speed electric car gearbox, stepping out of Taiwan’s development from auto parts manufacturing to module systems. step. Since its establishment 40 years ago, in addition to deeply cultivating the development and manufacture of gears, in recent years, it has also actively deepened the "inner" and prepared for the new era of electric vehicles through smart manufacturing.

In the power system at the heart of an electric vehicle, in addition to the motor, another core component is the gearbox that helps the electric vehicle change speed. For a long time, the disadvantage of a single-speed gearbox is that there is only a choice between high-speed driving and battery life. However, the two-speed gearbox jointly developed by the Batomgovernment and the Industrial Technology Research Institute allows electric vehicles to have both. At that time, it attracted much attention and attracted the arrival of Hon Hai and Pegatron.

The results of long-term efforts will soon be revealed, but in fact, for this gear manufacturer, a new round of challenges is beginning.

In order to welcome the new era of electric vehicles, the Batom government has made a lot of efforts in deploying smart manufacturing in recent years. Batom Co., Ltd. general manager Lin Yi Min said that the Batom smart manufacturing mainly hopes to achieve the goal of "low cost manufacturing (LCIM)" through automation, including automatic production, automatic loading and unloading, automatic measurement, automatic feedback, automatic logistics, automatic warehousing, etc. And from a single station automation, and finally into the automation of the whole process. The purpose of doing so, as mentioned above, has a lot to do with cost.

Holding orders for electric vehicles to accelerate automation layout

As the world's largest electric vehicle brand gear supplier in Taiwan, I have dealt with Batom Co., Ltd. electric vehicle customers and found that electric vehicles have not only subverted the century-old structure of the automobile industry, but also business thinking. Lin Yi Min revealed that the "innovation" emerging in the era of electric vehicles is actually more like the electronics industry to some extent. Especially in terms of price negotiation, he can better understand the differences between traditional car manufacturers and electric vehicle customers. This is also one of the reasons why in the blueprint of smart manufacturing, Batom Co., Ltd. companies will first consider cost as the starting point.

No matter which industry they are in, for most manufacturers, "cost reduction and efficiency increase" has become the core issue of the current industry. How to improve production efficiency, increase equipment utilization rate, and maximize production efficiency under existing conditions and space, automation plays a very important role in it.

Lin Yi Min said that all manufacturers hope to be able to achieve 24-hour uninterrupted production. According to Batom calculations, compared with general production, the output of uninterrupted production can be four times higher. Everyone hopes to increase the production capacity. However, the current Relying on a large amount of manual work is difficult to achieve, and Taiwan is also facing an increasing shortage of workers. Nowadays, introducing automation is no longer an option, but an inevitable thing to do.

Lin Yimin said that some colleagues in the industry once came to China to observe and see the Batom investment in automation. While they were amazed, they also secretly sighed that a lot of money must have been spent behind it. He admitted that introducing automation is really not an easy task. For example, when you want to achieve flexible production, the pre-work includes fixtures, automatic mold change systems, robotic arms and other related accessories, or integration, or redesign, and in addition to hardware equipment, such as the serial connection of management systems, It is also another project, the huge infrastructure project, how can manufacturers not be deterred, let alone the capital expenditure behind it.

So where should manufacturers start? Lin Yimin also shared his experience along the way with his Batom experience. He said that Taiwan is mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, and it is difficult to follow the practices of advanced manufacturing countries for Industry 4.0. It is possible to achieve fully automated production, but it depends on the nature, scale and volume of the enterprise, and each enterprise should Find the production mode that suits you first, and then decide the proportion of automation. In terms of Batom production, because the volume is not as large as that of the electronics industry, it is more inclined to the production mode based on human-machine collaboration, and he also points out The final key is to use the perspective of lean production management to evaluate which production links are suitable for automation or to retain manpower.

To introduce automation, we should start with places with high production value. Lin Yi Min said that in terms of gear manufacturing, the price of gear processing machines is 5-10 times more expensive than that of ordinary CNC processing machines. It is a kind of heavy investment, and it is used properly. When the utilization rate of equipment is improved and the production capacity is enlarged, the overall value will be revealed.

Technology is not the problem, management is the challenge

In the goal of reducing costs, managing costs is a major challenge. Lin Yi Min observed that there are actually quite a few small and medium-sized enterprises in Taiwan with mature production and manufacturing technologies. They have struggled in the market for half a century and have survived until now. This is the characteristic of traditional invisible champions. However, the problems they encounter now focus more on In addition to technology, it is how to make production management more and more detailed through further upgrading, which also motivates them to embrace smart manufacturing more actively.

For example, the management thinking that is common in the electronics industry has gradually entered the auto parts industry, trying to move from batch management to item-by-item tracing. In recent years, in order to improve the mastery of products, Batom Co., Ltd. have also begun to put QR codes on each gear in the important process. The purpose is to completely record the manufacturing history of each gear, so that when an abnormality occurs, it is convenient for the management unit to quickly clarify the abnormality. The reason and reason, and in the future, theBatom also hopes to achieve the ultimate lean management and trace the whole process step by step.

In addition to building the production history of gears, the company has also improved the manual operation mode and optimized on-site management to eliminate the bad habits of not being real-time and missing information in the past. However, in the past, traditional production relied on manual labor. Once it is changed, it is not easy. Therefore, the principle of Batom mastery is to make the machine integrate more automation and intelligent technologies while minimally changing the existing manual operation mode, and outline the optimal human. For this reason, the Batom government has also made great efforts in various aspects such as machine networking, information digitization, and smart machines in recent years.

Including under the principle of "input from the source", let the processing equipment integrate with ERP, MES and other management systems through the Internet to achieve two-way information feedback. In addition to automatically reporting the processing status, processing quantity, and machine parameters to the upper system, it avoids Afterwards, the information needs to be manually registered to generate information gaps. Second, it can also be used to track production history and achieve quality analysis and management. On the other hand, processing equipment can also automatically dispatch workers through the system and load work order orders.

In addition, Batom people also take advantage of the modern habit of "everyone has a mobile phone" to replace paper-based operations with App input. Lin Yi Min emphasized that the key to how to change the existing operation mode at a minimum is to make users "insensitive". Therefore, Under the simplification of the operation process and friendly user interface, the user's burden should not be increased as much as possible, and its acceptance can be improved. Lin Yi Min also observed that digital tools like this are more likely to be successfully promoted in factories.

In addition to projects such as machine networking and the introduction of digital tools, the Batom government also uses automation to make machines and equipment smarter and improve production efficiency. For example, there are many reasons for machining errors during the machining process, and tool wear is one of them. In the past, operators had to manually measure, input parameters, and perform secondary corrections on site. Measurement technology, in addition to on-machine measurement to avoid manual errors, the measurement results can also be instantly fed back to the processing machine for automatic correction.

Lin Yi Min generously shared the current Batom hard work on the road to smart manufacturing, but he still believes that there is still a long way to go. In the post-epidemic era, the subsequent changes in the industrial environment have not allowed the industry to stagnate or turn back. In fact, compared with Taiwan's gear king and big, Batom Co., Ltd. is a relatively small family business, but perhaps this is also one of the characteristics of many small and medium-sized enterprises in Taiwan. They can attack with more diverse and flexible advantages to find the most suitable On the contrary, it walks out of a unique sky in the environment of intelligent manufacturing.

From: https://today.line.me/tw/v2/article/RG60Yz
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