Company : Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Power Train Production Systems

Power train production is at the heart of any automotive business, and is a complex multi-facetted operation embracing many different processes, such as CNC metal cutting, materials handling, sensing, test and measurement. In order to meet demanding productivity objectives, accuracy, repeatability, consistency and precision must all be to the highest standard.

Traditionally a plethora of technologies have been deployed within power train production – CNC machines, motion control, tracking and tracing, gauging and measurement, sequence control, networked data collection. This makes for a high total cost of ownership and raises risks associated with designing, operating and maintaining multiple systems from different vendors that may not have been intended to work together. This can diminish and slow return on investment. Longer term, a poorly running plant has more difficulty justifying further capital investment making it difficult to remain abreast of changing market demands.

Mitsubishi uses its expertise as a leading developer of control technologies to rationalise these varying forms of production control into a single system. This is based on the iQ Automation Platform, which supports dedicated systems for CNC, motion control, sequence control and information management on a single controller. This in turn is easily applied to plant operation, testing, materials transfers, data collection and analysis, production reporting and management information generation.