How to solve quality problems by advanced fully-automated manufacturing systems

Companies devoted to manufacture operations of small sets for the automotive industry need to follow the usual quality standards, accomplishing with the delivery times. Commonly, these operations are performed with automatic or semi-automatic equipment in order to increase their competitiveness. Some partially automated systems allow complex manufacturing operations but cannot always ensure the required level of quality. This work was developed in order to solve quality problems reported on the transmission system of automotive windshield wipers, where a brass's tube is inserted and partially deformed at one of the tips. However, tubes' suppliers cannot ensure the dimensional accuracy needed by the semi-automatic system, and the manufacturing equipment is not able to detect and reject these components before the assembling process, resulting in the production of defective sets. In order to overcome this problem, impossible to solve using the current semi-automatic equipment, a new solution was developed through a fully automated system under controlled costs, enabling the set manufacturing operation in a competitive way.