Ziehl-Abegg: Even more power for the top class

Continuity on the inside, continuity on the outside – something Hermann Mütsch, Production Manager for electronics manufacturing, can confirm first hand. He has been at the Künzelsau-based company since 1989 and accompanied the procurement of four Ersa wave soldering lines directly. In all, five lines have been delivered from Wertheim am Main to Künzelsau. The first of these – as far back as 1983 – was an EST 350 for the soldering of PCB for transformer-based control units. As electronics manufacturing grew, an EWS 330 was added in 1998; this was already equipped with a transport system and coding for soldering programs. Seven years later, a second EWS 330 followed in a lead-free design, the feed section moved from the first to the second machine. In July 2015, a POWERFLOW e N2, the first nitrogen-supported full-tunnel wave soldering line was put into operation, followed by a second POWERFLOW e N2 in September 2016 – but this time completely integrated in an EC-THT placement line with 21 metres of peripherals and transfer of the soldering  programs by the master computer at the line.

“With the latest THT line we knew we wanted to rely on the same Ersa system as two years ago, because we are familiar with the results of the POWERFLOW and the products it was being purchased for had already been running on our first system,” says Heiko Spohn, process optimiser in electronics manufacturing at ZIEHL-ABEGG. Soldering quality had already been significantly improved under nitrogen with the first POWERFLOW thanks to better wetting and passages, fewer solder bridges and scum, and throughput increased thanks to the enhanced pre-heating of the soldering modules. The special features of the new line: The manufacturing line is completely concatenated, has moved away from individual workstations – the line is set up in three identical strands so that every product can practically be produced at every strand. Heiko Spohn continues, “The line has mainly been designed for our EC PCBs – a strongly growing segment. PCBs can be equipped separately at each strand and sent to the testing station – making independent work possible. Work can go on even if there is a colleague missing.”

It was just as important for implementation for ZIEHL-ABEGG that employees should have optimum conditions at the workstation, such as ergonomic height-adjustable worktables, for example. Another objective was the consolidation or further development of the high quality standard – which is where “der Schlaue Klaus” (Clever Klaus) came into the picture, a software-supported system that checks the manually equipped boards for completeness and correctness. The quality of the first POWERFLOW e N2 was already very high and Schlauer Klaus would have led to a further increase in quality, saved a significant amount of time, reduced placement errors to almost zero despite mixed operation. Production Manager Hermann Mütsch retraces the latest development in electronics manufacturing at ZIEHL ABEGG: “We are constantly changing our product spectrum towards energy-efficient EC fans to comply with future ErP directive – it was clear from
the very beginning that we needed intelligent electronics for this.” The electronics manufacturing production department had originally been designed for end products – manufacturing control devices for ventilation system applications and to trigger elevator motors. “Now, the task is to produce PCBs that we can install in our fans. Suddenly, we are talking about a quantity of 400,000 – enormous growth potential.

This was not possible with the previous capacity despite changing to 2-shift operation, so that we had to buy in external PCBs at first. The new building for drive technology left us with production space that we were able to use,” Hermann Mütsch explains. The electronics manufacturing department presented the Board with a suggestion for setting up a separate THT production line – with much fewer types, much less variance and increasing unit figures. An increase in capacity for manual placement was also necessary, as well as the increase in capacity in SMD production. Throughput time, stock reduction, raising production to a new level – buzzwords often used in theory and discussions, but what about practical day-to-day business? “With these PCBs, we typically work with a batch size of 300 – whereas we used to calculate four or five days in total for these, we now need less than eight hours on the new line with two placement staff. An extremely important factor for sales – not to mention connection to the master computer, which we use to control our systems such as soldering line and line technology, and the traceability and recording of assembly-related data,” says Hermann Mütsch. ZIEHL-ABEGG electronics manufacturing will have achieved the targeted figures by 2019 – proven in August 2017 when more than 18,000 boards were produced on the new line. A 17 percent reduction in time allocation has been achieved compared with the old production line, with single-type placement this figure was even 20 percent – for the same product. This exceeded the expectations of even the ZIEHL-ABEGG experts.

“Throughout our business relationship, we have always received outstanding support from Ersa Sales, who were extremely committed to us. The same applies to Ersa Service, which always responds quickly – Ersa has been the right partner for our business for almost 35 years now, and will be in future too,” predicts Production Manager Hermann Mütsch. Even if the project phase for the new line did take somewhat longer and stretched over three or four years – first basic sketches were prepared in 2013, then initial meetings and discussions took place with Ersa and peripherals expert Pacha to explore the implementation options. Many approaches were discussed and rejected, in order to achieve the best technological solution together at the end of the day. ZIEHLABEGG has achieved its objective: Capacity up, unit production up, quality up, throughput down, costs down, stable line, reliable partners all round!