“Dig­i­tal­iza­tion secures our glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and future via­bil­i­ty”

As a tech­nol­o­gy leader, SCHUNK uses dig­i­tal­iza­tion to offer its cus­tomers best-in-class prod­ucts and ser­vices. Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Timo Gess­mann explains what these are.

Mr. Gess­mann, the future is dig­i­tal – what does that mean for SCHUNK?

Timo Gess­mann: We are clas­sic mechan­i­cal engi­neers. But the top­ic of dig­i­tal­iza­tion has dri­ven us since the 1980s and we see it as a great oppor­tu­ni­ty, both for our cus­tomers and for our­selves.

On the one hand, our smart prod­ucts and ser­vices increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of our cus­tomers, and on the oth­er hand, we increase our effi­cien­cy and opti­mize our qual­i­ty through dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Dig­i­tal­iza­tion secures our glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and future via­bil­i­ty – and also those of our cus­tomers.

Which SCHUNK prod­ucts are involved?

The iTEN­DO2 tool­hold­er, for exam­ple, used to be a pure­ly mechan­i­cal com­po­nent. Now it has sen­sors that make it pos­si­ble for the first time to obtain in-depth trans­paren­cy from the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. The sen­sors mea­sure, for exam­ple, high fre­quen­cy vibra­tions or accel­er­a­tions in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, and the intel­li­gent tool­hold­er is able to pro­vide the user with process feed­back up to and includ­ing auto­mat­ic opti­miza­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing para­me­ters. This enables cus­tomers to increase their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in man­u­fac­tur­ing and enhance process reli­a­bil­i­ty. This is a pre­req­ui­site for a high­er degree of automa­tion.

“With our smart prod­ucts & ser­vices, robots can see, feel, under­stand and learn.”

Timo Gess­mann, CTO

An anal­o­gy might be a car that uses sen­sors to mea­sure fac­tors such as speed, dis­tances, posi­tion, etc. when dri­ving and nav­i­gat­ing, and dis­plays this infor­ma­tion live on dig­i­tal nav­i­ga­tion maps. This detailed dig­i­tal image makes it pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy and avoid traf­fic jams, so dri­vers can plan ahead and reach their des­ti­na­tion faster. This infor­ma­tion from the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal worlds is also essen­tial for the grad­ual imple­men­ta­tion of autonomous dri­ving.

What oth­er advan­tages does the eval­u­a­tion of this sen­sor data have?

A smart prod­uct sup­ple­ment­ed by dig­i­tal ser­vices such as the iTEN­DO2 can be used to pre­dic­tive­ly detect tool wear in auto­mat­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing using the sen­sors. Time­ly tool changes help avoid rejects and increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Anoth­er exam­ple are our smart grip­per appli­ca­tions, which use a cam­era sys­tem and spe­cial­ly devel­oped AI soft­ware to detect which work­pieces are locat­ed where, and then use this infor­ma­tion to auto­mat­i­cal­ly imple­ment the appro­pri­ate grip­per pos­es for han­dling the work­pieces. As a result, cus­tomers no longer have to man­u­al­ly pro­gram all work­pieces and grip­ping move­ments in advance. This means that automa­tion solu­tions can be imple­ment­ed quick­ly and eas­i­ly.

To what extent have the require­ments for prod­ucts changed due to dig­i­tal­iza­tion?

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion adds new dig­i­tal fea­tures and ser­vices to the func­tions of exist­ing mechan­i­cal prod­ucts. With our smart prod­ucts and ser­vices, we enable our cus­tomers to fur­ther opti­mize exist­ing appli­ca­tions and process­es on the one hand, and to auto­mate com­plete­ly new process steps on the oth­er. As a result, we are sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ing the scope of our prod­ucts and ser­vices to enable automa­tion in a wide range of appli­ca­tions and indus­tries.

What dig­i­tal ser­vices does SCHUNK offer?

With a free online con­fig­u­ra­tor, we offer cus­tomers a tool to design grip­pers, grip­per fin­gers or chuck jaws in real time and have a CAD mod­el cre­at­ed direct­ly. This saves a lot of effort. In addi­tion, our cus­tomers online imme­di­ate­ly receive the offer price for the con­fig­ured prod­uct and the deliv­ery time. Thanks to the con­sis­tent dig­i­tal­iza­tion of our process­es from the online con­fig­u­ra­tor to our smart fac­to­ry, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly man­u­fac­tures the cor­re­spond­ing prod­uct, we are able to deliv­er in four days, for exam­ple.

Dig­i­tal­iza­tion will con­tin­ue to evolve in the future and phys­i­cal prod­ucts will merge increas­ing­ly with dig­i­tal ser­vices. This leads to a steady increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while enhanc­ing the user expe­ri­ence through the use of our smart prod­ucts and ser­vices!