Case Study: General Motors - Automotive Industry

About General Motors

General motors is commited to delivering the best cars and trucks and have nearly a 100-year history . GM has a commitment to product excellence and design purity, expressed through beautiful interiors and compelling bodylines. Their common goal is clear: To provide the finest vehicles possible to every customer in every market around the globe.

Business Challanges

General Motors required the ability to transport transmission cases and torque converter housings from the pack out area on the main level to the prismatics storage racking area on the 2nd floor quickly and efficiently. They also required to automate the process and integrate with FMC AGV’s to eliminate fork truck traffic between the 1st and 2nd levels.

Project Challanges

Conveyor must be able to communicate via handshake field sensors with AGV’s and index automatically without human intervention.
Allow for the conveyor system to tie into GM’s Cimplicty call system without compromising integrity of existing operations.
Integrating the GE Fanuc 90/30 PLC with same make of HMI and Profibus protocol communication system.
Coordination between GM safety, engineering, controls, EDS, and FMC to insure a high performance system within budget.

The Results

Use of a dual-level 2.5” dia. Chain Driven Line Roller system to transport dunnage pallets proved to be a good solution. Internet protocol with FMC robots proved to be a challenge but after debug the system works very well.
The conveyor matched existing equipment in the plant and provides commonality of replacement parts for GM.
BMH provided equipment that will allow GM to double its production of the V6 model cars through full ramp up cycle of 1,500 pallets per day.