Flawless assembly helper
Screens inside the Kvasiny and Mladá Boleslav production facilities simplify work for employees
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he number of displays at ŠKODA AUTO plants has been rising for some time. The VISPART system is running on them and visualising parts, which makes it easier for employees to perform their tasks. It displays information about cars, numbers and sometimes photos of parts or even illustrated work instructions related to specific work on the car within a given cycle and operation.
The latest VISPART system displays are being used in Mladá Boleslav in the MB I assembly, that is, on the second production line that will be completely covered. In addition to the MB I system, you will find this system in MB II and the new M18 Paint Shop, too. However, the system’s original home is Kvasiny. It is the ML2 assembly line that witnessed the VISPART system’s launch. It also helps in the K4 Paint Shop and on the ML1 hall assembly line. “The idea of visualising parts in production has become the cornerstone of the dProduction project – digitising the production line”, explains Miloslav Rutterle from PFS-P/41 – Production Management of Digitisation.
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The screens will be used at the Mladá Boleslav plant in 2021. Currently, most of them are in hall M13; others are in halls M18 and M1.
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displays will be in Kvasiny in the next year, where they are used by employees in halls ML1, ML2 and K4.
How VISPART works
Two monitors (left and right) are installed on each assembly line cycle to help workers to identify the parts to be assembled in a particular vehicle. Some parts may have dozens of variants and can easily be interchanged. VISPART helps to prevent such cases. The need for visualising parts is automatically calculated for each car every day. “To do the calculations, we also use the so-called technological parts list describing what the car consists of and during which cycle and operation the part is assembled”, explains Radek Najman from FIB/5 – IT Production Preparation. VISPART also uses the illustrated work instructions database of the DFView system, thanks to which it can provide these instructions if necessary. The system is currently using six types of screens, which simplifies the work of operators on the line. “We don’t show all the parts in a given cycle – only those where many variants are assembled or, conversely, those that are assembled less frequently. Always in agreement with the users”, Rutterle explains. Luděk Vokáč
The future of this news
VISPART can also be used at other workplaces. “We can show what is needed. And since we’re using an agile approach in developing the system, we can react quickly. We’re introducing something new every week”, is how Vojtěch Kozák from the FIB/5 – IT Production Preparation department outlines the development pace. Thus, VISPART will play an increasingly important role in ŠKODA AUTO plants. The system will be able to quickly react to the need to change a part in production, for example, due to a supplier failure. We also count on it in the event of a robot outage or shutdown in the Paint Shop, and for it to be more widely deployed in the old Paint Shop in Mladá Boleslav.
How is it different from mVIS?
VISPART creates comprehensible information from source data and complex calculations, which prevents errors and guides workers in a simple way (without the need to interact with the visualisation) during the assembly. mVIS is a unified visual system that converts various data and information into a modular form. It also offers user interaction or management and the distribution of multimedia content. Both visualisation systems can complement each other appropriately.