Meeting market demand by automating
new extended production facility in a record time
I. Why Choose VITESSE (=V=)
Created in 1964, GYS is a French industrial group with more than 900 employees worldwide. With a cutting-edge research center, GYS is a major player in the design and manufacture of welding equipment, battery chargers, and body repair systems. With factories and commercial subsidiaries in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and China, GYS plans to dominate its market in the years to come through its investment in quality and innovation.
This is not a sector lacking in business. In fact, according to Bruno Bouygues (CEO of the GYS Group), "50% additional turnover could be achievable in 2023".
To meet demand, GYS has implemented an industrial strategy in two main areas:
A significant CAPEX investment (additional 10,000 square meters production facility)
A partnership with Full Speed Automation bringing VITESSE (=V=) for the automation of new lines
Bruno Bouygues
Etienne Pasquet
II. How VITESSE (=V=) transforms operations
Instant automation
"Imagine being able to automate your processes without being an automation expert. At GYS, we had this incredible experience with Anthony, who, without any automation training, was able to take control of the VITESSE (=V=) solution and master it in just 20 minutes! And the best part is that VITESSE (=V=) is accessible to all accredited departments in the company, allowing everyone to optimize their lines," explains Etienne Pasquet, head of robotics at GYS.
The first transformation offered by VITESSE (=V=) is to enable operational staff from various functions to automate production lines without knowing how to code. This is especially useful for the two key functions at GYS:
- Maintenance, which has very little automation expertise
- The test bench service that creates small test machines for our products on the line.
With VITESSE, they can easily add a control or automation if a need is identified (currently, it is difficult for them to leave their work area with their tools, which are designed to control finished products).
Etienne already sees multiple use cases that could accelerate the industrialization of these 10,000 m2 from 2 years to 4 months. Non-exhaustively, he has identified the following areas:
Vision control: This control saves time because it was previously performed after tinning, requiring heavy, long, and tedious rework. In addition, automated visual control brings quality gains by minimizing errors and speeding up verification (250 ms vs. 5 to 10 minutes). Furthermore, this control allows data such as quantity, time, and quality to be collected for more traceability.
Assembly of aluminum radiators on PCB: This process aims to set up a system for evacuating parts. The aluminum blocks are screwed by an operator using a torque-controlled screwdriver and automatically evacuated via a conveyor belt to the next station. However, during the station's move to a new location, the allotted time was very short, making it impossible to program automation. The benefits include a reduction in handling by the operator and the next station.
Automatic screw tightening control: This control reduces the movement of boxes from station to station and also allows traceability information to be collected on tightening.
Assembly control: This control is performed by various sensors to validate the correct assembly of components. Previously, these checks were done manually and contained errors. Now, the checks are more precise and performed in the background.
One of GYS production lines
Line supervision
Once VITESSE (=V=) is installed and the processes are automated in no-code, the possibilities for production supervision are endless. Now that the data is available, Etienne can easily monitor his key indicators in real-time on each process:
Vision control:
- Control time (compared to the time needed for manual control)
- Control success rate (number of correctly controlled pieces compared to the total number of pieces)
- Amount of collected data (compared to the amount of data collected with manual control)
Aluminum radiator assembly on PCB:
- Assembly time (compared to the time required for manual assembly)
- Number of operator handling operations required (compared to the handling required for
manual assembly)
Automatic screw tightening control:
- Screw compliance rate (number of compliant screws compared to the total number of screws)
- Screw traceability time (compared to the time required to manually track screws)
Assembly control:
- Control success rate (number of correctly assembled elements compared to the total number of elements)
- Control accuracy (compared to the accuracy of manual control)
- Control time (compared to the time required for manual control)
Internalization of Competences:
With VITESSE (=V=), maintenance, production, and quality managers have the ideal tool to deploy all their industrial creativity. Where they used to have to launch projects over weeks with specialized companies in industrial automation, they can now take their VITESSE screen to simulate, orchestrate, correct, and implement their optimization ideas, or invent new processes.
We are in the century of creativity and just as ChatGPT has not replaced journalists, VITESSE (=V=) will not replace engineers. It will just make the most creative 10x more productive.
Visual Inspection station
The technical design team at GYS
III/ Immediate first results:
"In a few weeks, we did what would have taken us 9 months with a third-party company."
The revolutionary aspect of VITESSE (=V=) also comes from its speed of execution. The latency time between the idea and the test and implementation of the idea has never been so short in the industrial world.
Here is the process, from discovery to impact:
15 days: before any commercial exchange, the team at Full Speed sought to understand our needs and then came to visit us on site to deepen and identify the lines to work on.
+15 days: Olivier made us a clear, detailed commercial proposal accompanied by a demo contextualized to our needs.
+7 days: GYS's COO validates the offer.
+7 days: The VITESSE (=V=) team comes to spend 1 week on site.
+7 days: VITESSE is running on two production lines, with 5 machines each.
+3 weeks: we have 5 internal people autonomous on VITESSE capable of orchestrating the automation continuously.
In total, 2 and a half months from our first call to:
- Automate 4 lines
- Have 5 local champions on automation
- Give us control of our industrialization
Again, VITESSE (=V=) does not replace engineers, but it allows the most creative ones to be 10x more productive.