Perfection of Rebirth

Chapter 807 Welding Production Line

What a car looks like, you basically can't see what it looks like in a stamping shop.

Of course, very professional designers may be able to guess the appearance of the model from some shapes of the four doors and two covers, but ordinary people definitely do not have this level.

As the first of the four major processes in the automobile factory, after the stamping process, the parts are transferred to the welding workshop.Here, the automobile factory will weld the internal parts produced by the stamping workshop and the purchased stamping parts produced by the parts supplier together to form a car skeleton, which is called "body in white" by people in the industry.

He Wei body in white?
The English name is body in white, also known as the body body, which refers to the assembly of the body structure and covering parts, including the roof cover, fenders, engine cover, trunk cover and door, but not including accessories and decorative parts. Painted bodywork.

The reason why it is called "white", not "black" or "yellow", is because the steel used in the stamping workshop is silver-white. After the stamped parts are welded together, the entire body frame also presents a similar Silver-white form.

In fact, this is also an agreed name. With the increasing use of hot stamping parts, these parts are not silvery white after forming, but a little blue.

However, no one will change the name of "white body" to "blue body".

"Mr. Jiang, our welding workshop has a total of more than 2 square meters, which is more than double the size of the stamping workshop. Starting today, the mainline robots will be installed one after another," Pi Wei led Jiang Hui through the Through the passage between the stamping shop and the welding shop.

"How many direct production personnel are there in our welding workshop?" Jiang Hui asked.

Those who have learned about factory personnel arrangements, especially financial personnel, know the meaning of direct production personnel and indirect production personnel.

All workers who directly participate in product processing, such as operators, lathe workers, fitters, assemblers, etc., are direct production personnel; those who do not directly participate in production and processing, such as workshop directors, warehouse managers, craftsmen, and statistics (excluding those from the management department) ), forklift drivers, maintenance workers, etc. are all indirect production personnel.

Everyone else is considered a manager.

For the welding workshop of an automobile company, the number of direct production personnel directly represents its automation level.

Different welding production lines have very different levels of automation.

The welding quality of the car body directly determines the quality of subsequent processes. Poor welding quality of the car body not only affects the appearance of the vehicle, but also causes rain leakage, wind noise, road noise and door closing obstacles. It is still very important.

The earliest modern welding technology appeared at the end of the 19th century, first arc welding and oxygen gas welding, and later resistance welding. In the early 20th century, with the first and second world wars, there was a great demand for cheap and reliable joining methods for military equipment, which promoted the development of welding technology.

Ten years ago, or even a few years ago, China's automobile manufacturing industry was still a labor-intensive industry with a relatively low technical level.

Thousands of workers do highly repetitive tasks in a factory for just over $1 an hour, with only a few industrial robots scattered throughout the factory
But since recently, labor costs have been rising, and it is expected to continue to rise in the future, and the automotive industry has rapidly transformed from a labor-intensive industry to a capital- and technology-intensive industry.

One of the most obvious is the popularity of welding automation.

Robots use exactly the same method every time when doing welding and other work, which improves the level of quality control and solves various hidden dangers caused by frequent personnel changes.

"Mr. Jiang, at present, our welding workshop is planned according to two shifts a day. The initial production capacity is 30, and it will be expanded to 50 in the future. According to our current calculations, the direct production personnel in the welding workshop only need 50 people per shift. The two shifts have a total of about 100 people. When the production capacity of 50 is realized next year, it will increase slightly to about 150 people." Pi Wei is familiar with every workshop of Guanghui Automobile Factory, and Jiang Hui's concerns will naturally be answered quickly. Out.

"In the past five years, China's economy has developed rapidly, and workers' wages have also risen very fast. More importantly, everyone's awareness of rights protection has become stronger. In the next few years, I don't think this trend will weaken. We should increase the level of automation as much as possible and reduce the number of direct personnel,” Jiang Hui said.

For an automobile factory, the easiest areas to increase the level of automation are stamping, welding and painting.

The number of people in the stamping workshop itself is not particularly large. If it is not the use of single-punch presses from the beginning, the number of personnel that can be reduced by upgrading automation is relatively limited.

As for the painting workshop, it often has the highest level of automation. If it is to be further improved, the reduction of personnel is also very limited.

On the contrary, it is the welding workshop. If all manual welding is used, it will require about 50 people based on a workshop with a production capacity of 2000.

Of course, it is almost impossible to find an automobile factory that uses manual welding now. After all, the production efficiency and quality stability are too poor.

A car has at least 5000 solder joints. If you rely entirely on manual welding, the possibility of missing solder joints is infinitely high.

According to the current level of domestic independent brands, the automation level of welding is about 50%, that is, about half of the solder joints are welded by robots.

Of course, different companies will certainly be different.

For new factories of joint venture brands such as Volkswagen and General Motors, the level of automation will be higher, generally reaching 70% to 80%. The later the construction of factories, the higher this ratio.

The construction of the welding workshop of Brilliant Automobile was not aimed at its own brand to benchmark at the beginning.

Although I dare not say to build the most advanced welding production line in China, at least it must not be lower than the latest factory automation level of the joint venture brand.

As a result, the number of direct personnel must be relatively small, and this corresponds to a sharp increase in direct investment.

In 2008, the price of welding robots was still not as cheap as ten years later.

With the development of society and the advancement of science and technology, robots have been widely used in various fields of society, and the most widely used are industrial robots.

Since the advent of industrial robots in the early 60s, after more than 40 years of development, they have been widely used in the industrial field and become the main mechatronic equipment in the production automation of the automobile manufacturing industry.

At present, the most widely used welding robots in domestic automobile companies are the products of several companies such as KUKA (Kuka), ABB, Fanuc and Yaskawa.

(End of this chapter)