The Schaeffler Group is synonymous with innovation, quality, and precision. The company revolutionized the automotive industry in the 1950s with its cage-guided needle roller bearing. The product offers more traction and less wear than other designs, which helped make automobiles more affordable and efficient. The motion technology company has been driving industry trends, setting new standards, and pushing manufacturing boundaries ever since.
Schaeffler Special Machinery (Schaeffler SMB) is the Schaeffler Group’s unit that builds tailor-made automation solutions for end users and other Schaeffler facilities. The segment has 13 locations across three continents, with around 30,000 square miles of cumulative assembly space, and completes an estimated 4,800 projects per year – nearly all those projects involve machine vision.
“We’re born in automotive,” Hildebrandt said. “We’re lean in our machines, we’re lean in our processes, and we want to save seconds and sub seconds.”
That mission has amplified as Schaeffler SMB and other corporate units are shifting into electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing. This industry-wide change is affecting every aspect of automotive manufacturing, Hildebrandt said. There are longer production cycles and manufacturing lines, For example, a component made by Schaeffler might comprise dozens or even one hundred individual parts, some of which may be sourced from other suppliers, said Schaeffler SMB Image Processing Specialist, Raimund Taugner.
“It’s about speed, it’s about flexibility, and it’s about innovation,” Hildebrandt added. “You need to have technological competence in all of those pillars.” In turn, suppliers and manufacturers need to have competencies in digitalization, tracking and tracing components, and documenting processes. For years, Cognex has helped Schaeffler SMB reach and exceed those capabilities.An early application for Schaeffler involved automating part of the roller bearing manufacturing process. Schaeffler wanted a faster, more efficient way to count the number of rollers or “needles” within the bearing cage. Since the bearing cages are circular, the machine vision solution needed to account for changes in contrast, part position, and needle size.
We keep the world rolling, every car has some Schaeffler parts in it. And Cognex keeps us rolling with continuous innovation and versatile solutions, we’re happy to be driving toward a similar vision and mission.
Schaeffler SMB
Hildebrandt tested a 2D Cognex In-Sight machine vision system, and it was an immediate success.
“One machine after another was equipped with a Cognex In-Sight system and we developed and improved our process,” he said.
Schaeffler SMB and its customers have found use cases for PC-based machine vision, too. Historically, clutches were manually inspected and verified. Using an industrial camera with VisionPro, Cognex vision analysis software, allowed the camera to see what an operator sees. Edge learning technology within the system enabled technicians to classify different variations of acceptable and defective clutches, reducing inspection times and streamlining the process.
“That’s a quality concept we’ve copied multiple times, hundreds of times,” Hildebrandt said.
Beyond concepts, it's important that solutions for Schaeffler’s internal and external customers be easy to use, Taugner said. That’s another advantage of working with Cognex, he said. Systems and solutions are easy to replicate, easy to maintain, and there’s a substantial amount of training and instructional materials.
“In-Sight systems are easy to use, we can create programs and operators can quickly adjust parameters,” he said. “It’s a simple but stable process.”
Cognex and Schaeffler are integral partners off the manufacturing line, too. The two companies have been partners for years, helping each other solve complex problems and applying technology in new ways. Schaeffler has even provided valuable feedback on the development of Cognex vision systems. The close partnership and free exchange of ideas has helped both companies, as well as automakers around the world.
