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FAStplant® - Dürr's modular final assembly system

07/14/2005

Increasingly sophisticated demands put on automobile manufacturers also mean increased demands from their suppliers. Dürr has devised FAStplant® as a concept for final assembly operations allowing maximum flexibility as well as considerable savings in terms of time and money as far as installations and modifications are concerned.

FAStplant® supplied by Dürr Factory Assembly Systems (FAS) represents a new approach to providing really flexible systems for final assembly. The concept is based on three different, preassembled standard modules that can be combined and arranged into process lines to suit all assembly shop requirements. There is no need to suspend anything from the roof or to dig pits. FAStplant® is thus suitable for new plants, modifications, CKD facilities and pilot lines alike.

Each of the standard modules comprises a steel structure, conveyor equipment, a non-contact power and data transfer system (MOVITRANS®), lighting and control elements and is equipped to suit the specific needs of the work station involved. This allows implementing a complete final assembly line from trim area through to end of line test area. However, FAStplant® is also suitable for the installation of single sections of the line.

This standardization brings many benefits in all stages of a plant's life cycle. At planning stage, the modular FAStplant® system facilitates simple engineering processes and creating optimum plant layouts. Plant installation can be completed speedily and without problems thanks to the technically mature concept of pretested and preassembled modules. FAStplant® uses just one overhead conveyor system throughout a plant, or more specifically either an electric monorail system or Twin Trolley System® developed by Dürr FAS, and this helps to reduce technical complexity and the number of interfaces required in the plant. As a result coordination is simplified and technical problems are minimized and this in turn reduces start up times and costs.

Swift error detection and correction help to increase the plant's uptime reliability during production hours. FAStplant® offers comprehensive options how to move processes from end of line area forward to the assembly line. This includes, for example, wheel alignment in the line and electronic testing processes. MOVITRANS®, an inductive power and data transfer system, supplies FASmatic® vehicles with power, independent of batteries, and allows electronic testing processes to be easily integrated in the line.

One of FAStplant's strengths lies in its flexible conversion and modification to suit an existing line, since its level of automation can always be modified, involving little cost and time. Furthermore production rates can be modified inexpensively and fast by adding or removing one or more modules. After disassembling a line, its modules can be reused in the same or in a different place. FAStplant® allows the use of globally harmonized equipment due to its minimized plant specifications.

A decision in favor of FAStplant® pays off allowing an average unit cost reduction of 3 percent and installation time reduced by 30 percent when building a green field plant. However, benefits provided by FAStplant® significantly go beyond the initial investment. In follow-up projects FAStplant® proves to be a solid basis for innovative and cost oriented implementation of projects in the brown field and retrofit sector.

The benefits mentioned convince leading car manufacturers. Following the completion of a FAStplant® system at DaimlerChrysler Sindelfingen in spring 2004, Toyota has decided to adopt FAStplant® at their French site in Valenciennes.