Fully Automated Assembly of Coffee Grinders

The Romanshorn production plant is where Eugster/Frismag AG produces all coffee grinders for the group as a whole. The company’s customers include many of the world’s most renowned brands in this market space, which means the demands on quality are exceedingly high.

“We meet these demands using our expertise and dedication to continuous improvement,” states Stefan Lorch, Head of Production Engineering. “For example, we recently sought a solution to produce our coffee grinders fully automatically, instead of manually using 10-12 employees. However, the project was not without its challenges. We not only wanted to automate the previously manual processes, but also the logistics concepts around the assembly line, while maintaining the cycle time.” 

Eugster/Frismag AG turned to its trusted system integrator for the solution, a company that has been working with FANUC for the past eight years on a wide variety of industrial automation projects. For the coffee grinder assembly line it was decided that FANUC LR Mate 200𝑖D/7L long-arm yet compact industrial robots would provide the optimal solution, with the company identifying their superiority to other actuator systems in terms of flexibility, accuracy and speed. 

At Romanshorn, the 14 LR Mate FANUC robots now assemble a complete electromechanical coffee grinder module fully automatically in under 8 seconds. As a result, Eugster/Frismag AG has been able to increase efficiency and capacity significantly.

To minimise unplanned downtime and maximise equipment availability, the assembly line also takes advantage of the FANUC ZDT industrial IoT solution. ZDT uses predictive analytics to monitor robot health, identify potential issues and prevent unexpected downtime, ultimately maximising production throughput and optimising maintenance.