Simulation reduces costs and risks for RTS Flexible Systems

Tag : all industrial product
 The company's world-leading intelligent vision system combines withVisual Components simulation software to help the packaging systemsmaker optimise design, increase product performance, and acceleratemanufacturing.

Visual Components industrial simulation software is playing a keyrole in the design and manufacture of the end-of-line, automatedpick and place robotic systems for packaging operations made by RTSFlexible Systems Ltd. The simulation software is being used to helpoptimise configurations before proposals are shown to potentialcustomers and ensure that, once built, systems work'right-first-time'.

Designed to increase capacity, enhance throughput and productyield, the innovative packaging machines feature an intelligentvision system developed by RTS Flexible Systems. The technologyidentifies products entering the packaging machine and isprogrammed to 'see' a variety of items that are eithersub-standard, or of a particular type for sorting and packaging.Appropriate positioning and feed rate data is sent by the visionsystem to multiple, downstream, 4-axis fast picking robots thatselect and pick products from the conveyor belt for processing.

To ensure a design works to a customer's requirements, RTS FlexibleSystems could either, construct a machine and test various optionsto establish the best configuration, or build a virtual model at afraction of the price, using simulation software. It chose thelatter approach, but the problem was finding the right software.
The company already used several simulation systems. Designed forspecific purposes these products all lacked one vital feature: theintegration of statistics-based discrete event simulation andkinematic robot simulation.

Uniquely, Visual Components offered this vital combination. Betterstill, it featured an affordable price and its open architectureincluded an all-important application program interface (API). Thisenabled RTS Flexible Systems, with support from the software's UKdistributor, SimX, a Manchester-based company specialising infactory and robotics simulation, to directly link the advancedprogramming in the manufacturer's machine vision system to theindustrial simulation software.

"Using the combination of our technology and Visual Components wecan optimise a system's configuration and performance, includinghow many robots are actually required," says Dr David Hopper,technical director of RTS Flexible Systems. "Now we can be sure atthe initial design and proposal stage, whereas the alternativemight be to discover - and to our cost - that another robot isneeded, or one is redundant, only after the machine has been builtand is in use. This has major benefits to us and our customers inminimising risk, saving money and enhancing our competitive edge."

Besides preparing realistic and reliable sales proposals, thecombined technology is also used to test 'what if' operations. "Youcan design for extremes, but in the real world it's the unexpectedevents that catch you out," says Hopper. "With this system - whichis unique in the world - we can run a wide variety of random teststo show customers how robust, flexible and efficient our solutionsare."

He adds, "The highly realistic simulation achieved with VisualComponents is also a good sales tool and facilitates requirementsdiscussions with customers. What's more, we can also use the datafor downstream manufacturing functions, so it's giving ustremendous value for money."