Bot on the chain gang

THE APPLICATION? Manufacture of Husqvarna’s chainsaws for forestry, agriculture, and horticulture. The challenge? Find ways to speed up production and provide the flexibility to accommodate future changes. The manufacturing process also included several labour-intensive stages involving screwing together components, tying workers up in tedious and repetitive tasks. The solution? Husqvarna is now using collaborative solutions from ABB, including a YuMi dual-arm cobot and an ABB IRB 1600 industrial robot with SafeMove safety software and laser scanner. 

To ensure its continued success and enable it to keep ahead of its competitors, Husqvarna constantly looks for new ways to manufacture its products. In 2018, the company decided to upgrade the part of the production process where the chainsaw starter is mounted to make it faster, more flexible and less prone to errors that could result in disruption and potential wastage. To achieve this, the company made the decision to add collaborative robots to work alongside production operators on its manufacturing line, providing added flexibility and allowing the workers to be deployed to higher level tasks.    

"We wanted a flexible collaborative solution that we could run relatively quickly whilst providing the flexibility to expand our operations or change tasks in the future," said Jimmie Sollén, technical manager at Husqvarna. 

YuMi - production improvement   

After analysing alternative solutions, Husqvarna chose ABB’s YuMi dual-arm collaborative robot, which now works side-by-side with operators on the assembly line, handling the task of picking screws and screwdriving them into the chainsaw to attach the starter. Now being used to help produce over 400 chainsaws per shift, YuMi has brought several benefits, including higher repeatability and fewer deviations in the assembly process. In addition, the robot has improved operators' working environment, as it reduces ergonomic problems due to repetitive screwing.   

"This is a much better and more reliable solution than the one we had before,” said  Sollén. “The robot helps to relieve our operators from handling what can be a very tedious task. If a problem does occur, it is also quite easy for our production line team leaders to intervene and reset the process.

“Using YuMi for the screwing part is one of the best decisions we have made,” said Johan Håård, production technician and team leader at the assembly line, Husqvarna. "In particular, using YuMi reduces much of the monotonous work of the operators. We want to remove as much manual screwing as possible for them, because it is a boring task that does not bring any customer benefit.”

Industrial-scale collaboration    

The successful introduction of YuMi to its production led Husqvarna to investigate additional ways of using robots to improve its chainsaw production. As a result, a second collaborative solution was installed on the same assembly in 2020 to handle another stage in the chainsaw production process, involving screwing in the chainsaw handle device at the same time as attaching a chain catcher. Featuring an ABB IRB 1600 industrial robot with SafeMove software and laser scanners, the solution allows safe collaboration with workers without the need for extensive safety fencing operators and partly without fences.    

"When we started looking at our second collaborative solution, we saw that with this ABB robot and traditional improvement work, we were able to further reduce our cost per product produced, enabling us to increase our competitiveness," said Sollén.     

More robot solutions in the future   

With YuMi now accepted as one of the team on the assembly line, Husqvarna will continue to invest in sophisticated robot solutions to further increase its manufacturing flexibility and cost efficiency.    

"We are constantly looking for new ways to automate and have very ambitious plans for more collaborative solutions, either using pure cobots or collaborative solutions. In this way, our factory will become even more competitive," said Sollén.

Matt Rollins is general Industry lead, ABB Robotics UK and Ireland