First plug-and-play, then step-by-step: Acubez™ paves the way for hassle-free production automation
What should be done if there is an acute need for a suitable solution, but the market does not offer a proper solution? One option: wait, continue to monitor the market and hope for a solution soon. The other: Think solution-oriented and act proactively, adequately address your needs and close the gap in the market. This laid the foundation for Acubez™: Modular manufacturing automation, intuitive to use even for non-experts and with very low barriers to entry.
Particularly in the Industry 4.0 cosmos, solution orientation is a central aspect to which a very high level of importance is rightly attached. Intuitive, needs-based, future-proof and sustainable, flexible, end-to-end, efficient and effective: “solution-oriented” can encompass all of these. And best of all: ” from the world of practice, for the world of practice”, because where many years of industry insights and first-hand specialist expertise flow into development, constructive solutions with substance and added value are created.
At an equal footing: Acubez™ understands medium-sized manufacturing
For Joshua Ulmer, the search for tailor-made automation and high flexibility led to the founding of Acubez™. The name Acubez™ stands for Automated Cubes and compactly summarizes the basic principle of modular manufacturing automation. Compactness is also a key aspect of the Acubez™ modules (“cubes”), which inspired founder and CEO Ulmer to realize his idea in 2018.
“There was a wide range of products on the market, but nothing could meet our individual requirements for a flexible, scalable and uncomplicated automation solution for machine loading with a small footprint,” explains Ulmer, himself the owner of a CNC machining company. “In Acubez™, we were finally able to bundle all our requirements, which we had not seen met by an existing system, into a full one-stop solution.”
With an interdisciplinary team of engineers, software engineers, quality experts, robot technology specialists and programmers, the modular automation platform is constantly evolving. Valuable impulses from our own in-house manufacturing consistently drive development forward in a practical manner, while focusing on the specific challenges and goals of the industry.
Acubez™ is modular manufacturing 4.0 – more compact and flexible than ever before
“Not every manufacturing company is at the same technological level when it comes to automation and digitalization. The available space in production facilities varies greatly, as do the individual pace of progress, order situation and capacity utilization,” says Ulmer, who has more than 15 years of experience in his own manufacturing company. This is why Acubez™ relies on intelligent and intuitive modules that are fully operational within a few days of initial installation based on the plug-and-play principle.
Thanks to the intelligent interconnectivity of the cubes, companies also benefit from the platform’s individual scalability and high step-by-step flexibility. These features allow a smooth and fast response to dynamic requirements, resulting in an overall increase in productivity of 30 to 40 %. The unparalleled versatility makes Acubez™ attractive not least for small batch sizes and HMLV production. Thanks to different module sizes and functional scopes, automated production with Acubez™ can be around 50% more compact than comparable solutions for the automation of machine loading. For example, the standard Acubez™ 800 configuration for low capacities requires a footprint of just 850 x 650 mm with a height of 950 mm.
Seamless integration, user-friendly and grows with the business
The idea for Acubez™ was born at EMI Integrated Systems, a medium-sized CNC manufacturing technology specialist for medical devices, aerospace and high-tech industrial components. The resulting automation solutions from Acubez™ are also aimed at medium-sized production companies that also want to optimize their small series production and increase their overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Based on the experience of numerous Acubez™ projects realized worldwide, the average payback period is only 9 to 12 months. This remarkable ROI is due to overall reliability and high uptime, which is mainly achieved through the combination of seamless integration and very short changeover times as well as a high degree of user-friendliness. In addition to increasing efficiency during regular working hours, the system also operates the machining centers autonomously, e.g. at night and on weekends.
Short amortization, sustainable and lasting advantages
The Acubez™ platform proves to be particularly future-proof because it grows modularly with the production and its tasks and can be flexibly adapted, significantly increasing overall efficiency and minimizing investment risks. The automation solution also contributes to overcoming the challenges posed by the shortage of skilled workers.
Details on the individual Acubez™ configurations can be found in the following brochure at https://www.acubez.com/brochure/ available for download.
