MI Ford Dealers See New Robots Remove Human Error; Precision Only Robots can Create

June 8, 2011 - PRLog -- DETORIT, M.I. – MI Ford dealers have heard about the new robotic laser inspection technology that will be bringing robots to the floor of Ford manufacturing plants in the U.S. and other global areas. Ford Motor Corp is investing about $100 million into 17 of its plants to begin the use of the technology.
The plant in Valencia, Spain, is the current pilot plant while the robots are being assembled in plants such as Saarlouis, Germany, and others in Michigan and Chicago. The vehicles to be inspected with the robots include the all new 2012 Ford Focus in Michigan and the new Ford Explorer built in Chicago.
Like other automatic robotic equipment, this new technology will take away a bigger portion of human error while also offering an improvement to the fit and finish of the vehicle. As exterior noise is one of the largest quality factors from consumers, Ford is taking these steps to reduce the wind noise as much as possible on each manufactured model.
MI Ford dealers may have learned that the robotic laser technology will inspect for specific fits, seals and all around structure of doors to ensure the measurements are exact down to a millimeter. The main purpose of the new robots will be to examine all doors, measuring and identifying points of non-conformity.
“Robotic laser technology gives us a degree of precision that we have never had before,” says Ron Johnson, Manufacturing Quality Manager of Ford of Europe, in a Ford press release. “It scans the dimensions of 500 key areas down to a tenth of a millimeter to make sure the parts fit perfectly and our cabins are extremely quiet.”
The robots are tuned to measure specific points on the vehicle where there was originally more room for human error with an operator manually checking how close and accurate the fitment was for the vehicles. This human error will now be reduced significantly.
MI Ford dealers may receive the inspected vehicles of these new robots sooner than other dealers.
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[Source(s): Ford Media, Left Lane]