Finding qualified workers is an increasingly pressing issue in economies around the world. In Europe, German industry has been the hardest hit. According to a current DIHK report, more than half of all manufacturers in Germany now face personnel shortfalls. Among these is Pierburg GmbH, a subsidiary of Rheinmetall. It’s in production that skilled labour is particularly scarce, reports Karsten Sonnenschein. Armed with a doctorate in engineering, he heads the renowned auto component maker’s Electrification and Digital­ization unit. “The persistent shortage of personnel and high labour costs in Germany have made manual assembly highly uneconomic in the meantime”, explains Sonnenschein. To improve the competitiveness of its plants, Pierburg has been automating production for some time now, both at home and abroad. In 2021 alone, the company installed fifty new industrial robots in its factories around the world.

High flexibility required

Fully automated assembly lines and robot cells are expensive”, concedes Sonnenschein, going on to note that it can be a long time before an investment pays for itself. At the same time, every product-specific modification results in equipment costs and downtimes, an increasingly common phenomenon: “Especially when it comes to newer components, shorter product lifecycles are now the norm.” He and his team at the company’s Niederrhein plant in Neuss therefore began to look for more flexible alternatives. They soon thought of collaborative robots. The gripper and vision systems for cobots on the market today failed to convince us”, recalls Lukas Romanowski, an engineering manager who took part in the project: “They’re tricky to program, aren’t sufficiently standardized and break down a lot.”

Innovative spirit, made by Rheinmetall

The Pierburg engineers therefore quickly set about developing their own cobot system with soft grippers. In doing so, they benefitted from the wide-ranging experience that Pierburg and the Group have accumulated at their highly auto­mated plants. At the same time, a great deal of proprietorial company expertise in pneumatics, elastomers and control devices flowed into the collaborative robot.

Development was complete in just over a year. By 2022 the first prototypes were in action at the company’s plant at the riverport in Neuss, just across the Rhine from Düsseldorf. “Thanks to their pneumatic elastomer gripper, the smart cobots are able to handle delicate tools with extreme tactile sensitivity, just like a human”, exults Romanowski. They can flip switches and push buttons, operate small load carriers, and detect signals. The cobot’s integrated 3D camera and advanced image processing based on artificial intelligence make this possible. Sonnenschein and Romanowski point out that Pierburg worked together with colleagues from Rheinmetall’s Electronic Solutions division on the vision system.

Robotic colleagues

Thanks to their versatility, the autarkic mobile cobots can be flexibly integrated into all kinds of work processes: assembling machines, for ex­ample, or putting the finishing touches on castings. They can also operate at test benches or be put to work packing up components. Commissioning and programming are straightforward as well. What makes the cobots special is their Multisoft gripper. It minimizes the risk of injury, thus enabling safe, CE-compliant cooperation with human workers on the factory floor. “Now that they’ve overcome their initial scepticism, the teams at our Neuss plant are very happy with their robotic colleagues”, reports Sonnenschein, adding that “the cobots take care of the monotonous tasks, leaving their human counterparts free to focus on more sophisticated, less physically demanding activities.”

The “smartphone of cobots”

As Sonnenschein sees it, the use of robots and the increased efficiency they bring is a huge plus when it comes to keeping industry competitive in a high-wage Germany. He and his team are currently trying to get other Pierburg plants interested in the cobots. Talks are also underway with Rheinmetall’s Waffe Munition unit. In the medium term, the company plans to market the collaborative robots externally as well. “The market potential is immense”, says Sonnenschein. He sees excellent opportunities in the food processing industry and at medium-sized industrial and craft sector companies. “Our soft robotics solutions are, so to speak, the smartphone of cobots”, says Sonnenschein, summing up his sales pitch. “Not only are they cheaper than other systems currently on the market, they also offer greater standardization, meaning that they can be deployed in a multitude of different ways.”