Monday, July 03, 2006
GM's drive for flexibility: as it works to put out more and better cars and trucks—more economically—GM is seriously pursuing a manufacturing strategy
Marty Linn maintains that flexibility is key today at General Motors' manufacturing operations. Consequently, engineers at the vehicle manufacturer are finding or developing the ways and means to increase the organization's ability to handle variations within the plants in short order. Linn knows more than a little something about this activity, as he is the principle engineer of Robotics within GM's Controls, Conveyors, Robotics & Welding Group (CCRW). Prior to taking this position at the start of 2004, he spent two years as a Total Integration engineer for Advanced Technology for the Body-in-White Group. And for about five years before that, he was the principal engineer for Robotics, Welding & C-Flex within CCRW. One of the things that is consistent about all of these positions is that they are focused on increasing flexibility. Which is one of the things that General Motors is aggressively pursuing. In fact, Linn says, "We want to be the most flexible auto manufacturer in the world." The plan is not to simply have assembly plants being capable of building variations off of a single product architecture, but of actually building multiple architectures in a single plant. In order to achieve this capability, it means the utilization of robots.
ROBOTS ABOUND. Linn says, "We use robots in every North American assembly plant." The roll call of the robots is pretty much what's expected. The big hitter: spot welding in the body shop. There is, he says, some arc welding, too. And there are material handling and material dispensing. The paint shops are heavily roboticized. And the metal components that are produced for assembly by the GM Metal Fabricating Div. have likely undergone press-to-press transfer with robots. "Robots are specified almost as commodities in every area of our assembly plants." Linn adds that there are numerous applications of the "bread-and-butter spot welding robot," but goes on to note, "In the last four years I've seen more and more applications of things like robots on 7th-axis slides for more capability." They're doing more "cooperative" operations, as when, say, one robot holds a part and two others weld it.
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