sponsoredCritical infrastructure and defence industries Manufacturing high-tech products – the benefits of modular equipment, fixtures and fittings

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item Industrietechnik GmbH

Find out how modular solutions bring maximum flexibility, reliability and efficiency to your high-tech manufacturing operations.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturers of high-tech products and companies in critical infrastructure and defence sectors such as aerospace to safeguard their competitiveness. They need to adapt to ever shorter innovation cycles and meet very specific customer requirements, while also ensuring that strict safety regulations are never overlooked. To meet these requirements, companies need a production environment that can be dynamically adapted to continuously evolving production operations.

Dual-use goods play a key role in high-tech manufacturing and critical infrastructure and defence sectors. These are products that can be used for both civilian and military applications. Flexible and standard-compliant solutions are particularly important in this area. Modular equipment from item provides exactly the flexibility and future-proofing that state-of-the-art manufacturing companies depend on.

Are you interested in modular solutions for high-tech production? With item, you can create flexible work benches, stairways and platforms, peripherals for mobile robots, and countless other applications: 

Why are modular solutions useful when manufacturing high-tech products?

Modular solutions provide the ideal combination of flexibility, safety and efficiency. This makes them a valuable resource, particularly for the manufacture of high-tech products and in critical infrastructure and defence sectors.

The modular components from item give you outstanding flexibility when it comes to designing stairways and platforms, manual workstations and solutions for automated intralogistics. All the components and solutions are designed to meet both specific safety requirements and the dynamic demands of high-tech industries.

The strengths of modular solutions at a glance:

• Rapid adaptation to changing production requirements
• Compliance with strict technical standards and ergonomic and safety requirements
• Minimal changeover times thanks to easy scalability and expansion options

What advantages do modular stairways and platforms offer in high-tech manufacturing?

Every year, there are over 35,000 accidents on stairways in businesses. Besides carelessness, the most common cause of these accidents is errors in the design and construction of stairway solutions.

The Stairway/Platform System from item is ideal for designing and building bespoke solutions. It also helps you comply with all safety requirements and technical standards in high-tech manufacturing. Stable machine steps, bridges, maintenance platforms and working platforms are all easy to implement with this modular system that ensures all the areas of a machine or plant can be reached safely and conveniently.

To avoid accidents, it is crucial that stairways and platforms are safe to use. DIN EN ISO 14122 specifies precise requirements for planning and design that take into account the following aspects:

• Stairway type and pitch 
• Ergonomic stairway design
• Rules for safe stairway design
• Design specifications for platforms
• Requirements for stepladders

Whether you’re looking for industrial steps, stairways, work platforms or guard rails – the item Online Shop has all the components you need to build standard-compliant solutions:

Why are modular work benches indispensable for the manufacture of high-tech products?

Despite advancing automation, manual tasks still play an essential role in the manufacture of high-tech products. The modular item Work Bench System can be used to design manual workstations in line with ergonomic principles.

What’s more, you can adapt these assembly work benches quickly and flexibly to suit changing requirements, handling areas and production conditions. You can also make very specific modifications to create accessible workstations.

Highlights of the modular item Work Bench System at a glance

• Flexibility: Height-adjustable item work benches can be configured for specific tasks. They offer flexible adjustment options for customising handling areas, visual fields and LED lighting. 
• ESD safety: An ESD-safe environment is essential when manufacturing sensitive electronic components for high-tech products. Specially developed ESD benches and electrostatically dissipative materials and accessories ensure the safety and functionality of these products. item work benches can be retrofitted with ESD safety.
• Flexible material supply and picking: Pivot arms, customisable accessories for tool stowage, and modular drawers based on the item Drawer System all support efficient organisation. Keeping everything in easy reach speeds up work and reduces the strain on staff.
• Optimised material flow: FIFO racks and modular material trolleys keep materials moving smoothly and reduce set-up times. Conveyor belts and suspended conveyor systems can be seamlessly integrated into assembly lines.
• Efficient processes with one-piece flow: Modular workstations and roller conveyors support the flexible processing of workpieces, which flow through the process without being held in storage between stations.

• Human-machine collaboration: item work benches are ideal for collaboration with robots. Modular robot base units can be flexibly adapted and integrated into working processes.

What benefits do mobile industrial robots offer for high-tech manufacturing?

Mobile robots have long been an integral tool in industry. When combined with modular peripherals, they can be used efficiently for a wide variety of transport tasks. In the manufacture of high-tech products, for example, mobile robots take on the task of supplying critical areas with essential goods and materials.

In general, mobile industrial robots can be divided into two types:

• AGVs (automated guided vehicles): These robots move along fixed routes that are marked out with lasers or wires, for example. They require a physical infrastructure in order to operate. 
• AMRs (autonomous mobile robots): Unlike AGVs, AMRs do not follow set routes. They navigate independently with the aid of installed or newly created maps of the surrounding environment and can avoid obstacles.

The advantages of mobile industrial robots for transport operations:

• More efficiency in transport operations 
• Less strain on workers, who are freed up from repetitive tasks and replenishment operations
•  Permanent availability
• Flexible scalability for responding to fluctuations in demand
• Error-free and reliable processes

• Transparency, thanks to clearly defined processes
• Fewer accidents and better occupational health and safety standards

When combined with modular solutions, mobile industrial robots open up an innovative opportunity to make intralogistics in high-tech manufacturing more efficient, more flexible and safer.

What do modular solutions for mobile robots look like?

The peripherals that item offers for mobile industrial robots consist of robot-specific Base Carts and application-specific superstructures known as Top Modules. Base Carts are the interface between the robot and Top Module. They are specially designed for the specifications of mobile robots from manufacturers such as ABB, MiR and SAFELOG.

You can use the item modular building kit principle to design bespoke Top Modules and mount them easily on the Base Carts. To speed up and simplify the design process, there are also ready-designed Top Modules for a variety of transport tasks that can be used as templates. You can adapt these as required in the item Engineeringtool:

• Transport frame: Suitable for Euro pallets, mesh boxes and self-supporting racks. 
• Transport rack: Developed for transporting cardboard boxes and small load carriers (SLCs) in various sizes.
• Picking rack: Suitable for transporting up to 18 standard SLCs measuring 600 x 400 mm.
• Mobile work bench: All the advantages of an industrial assembly work bench in a mobile format.
• Supply rack based on the Lean Production Building Kit System: Suitable for transporting a wide variety of goods.

• Picking rack: Designed for transporting cardboard boxes, standard SLCs and hanging goods.
• Shelf with roller conveyors: For efficient material supply.