The interior design of a car has developed to a major feature of individualisation. Customers can individually decide between huge variety of combinations of materials, colours and and fittings like ambient and decorative lighting. Fluctuations of colors, materials or quality are not tolerated.
These requirements must be met by the manufacturers in the context of the ever-tougher production conditions with regard to more efficiency and more automation. In addition, legal requirements, such as traceability of products and their components more and more require a complete part history.
As an internationally renowned specialist in the field of test automation and quality assurance, Ziemann & Urban GmbH has developed a solution that raises the test of passenger car interiors and ambient lighting to a previously unrivaled level:
Tailor-made end-of-line test systems for car door linings, which test 100% of all manufactured parts for functionality and fault-freeness and document every detail.
Previous situation/problem
As the parts but have to be assembled individually due to the high number of different equipment features, manual visual is the system of choice for verification. This is associated with an unacceptable fault rate due to the high variance, which leads to high follow-up costs for rework or return to supplier in the worst case. Due to the lack of documentation no traceability to the actual root cause is possible.
Conceptual Formulation
The requirements for the system developed and implemented by Ziemann & Urban are enormous:
Covering the high variety of materials, leather, seam colors, ambient lighting, audio systems, loudspeakers, switches, with the corresponding cable trees, in order to ensure inspection and documentation. The process security of this just-in-sequence production has to be faultless. The experience shows that customers (neither car builders nor car owners) do not tolerate any deviations in the interior.
Solution
Ziemann & Urban is able to supply all automation levels: From the small manual test center to the fully automatic end-of-line test cell with connection to a production database (e.g. SAP). The heart of the solution are the three different, perfectly coordinated software components - from own development and for decades approved at customers worldwide:
- ZU Vision:
The proprietary image processing system is today one of the leading Vision systems and fulfills all requirements of industrial image processing
- ZU Control:
Software for creating test and machine sequences with graphical user interface with touch screen
- ZU Com:
Powerful interface software for the integration of the required hardware and measurement technology
Features
The handling of the door panels can be either automatically on workpiece carriers (RFID-coded) or manually to the test station with the following functions:
- Generation of an order number (from SAP interface - after the test, the results are returned to the Database)
- Electrical and optical inspection/ measurement
- Optical identification (up to 17 cameras in an end-of-line tester)
- Inspection of the submodule currents
- Inspection of the implemented bus systems
- Inspection of the electrical Contact (with barcode for traceability) Inspection &
- Measurement of Ambient lighting, such as light intensity, light uniformity, hot spots (too bright spots), dark spots (darkened spots)
- Interfaces for control and regulation
- Check for complete assembly with any number of variants at the end of the process
- Storage and categorization of all inspection results per component
Special Characteristics
The end-of-line test systems from Ziemann & Urban are characterized by several unrivaled features:
- The system always contains the complete test data set for recheck
- All four door panels are located on a system with one operator - two systems with four operators are normal!
- Testing the ambient lighting results in an unprecedented process safety, as parts no longer glow differently
Advantages at a glance
- 100% inspection of all relevant parts
- 100% traceability of all production steps
- 0% error rate = no bad parts anymore because parts can be corrected (rework band)
- Time saving: Complete inspection of all elements of a door lock in approx. 20 seconds
- A test data file for all types - Advantage: Overview and reduced maintenance/ change effort
- Visualization of inspection features / results
- Easy to use software
- User guidance
- complete documentation
Summary
The tailor-made end-of-line test systems for car door panels from Ziemann & Urban enable a previously unique, integrated and process-proof inspection of lighting and interior according to the manufacturer`s specifications. Customers benefit from the highest possible process reliability while simultaneously reducing the time and costs. Thanks to the possible reduction of the complaint rate to zero, the system also delivers an immediately noticeable benefit.
