Electricity and Control May 2024

DRIVES, MOTORS + SWITCHGEAR

Global standards in local mechatronics assembly

Having invested significantly in the construction of its new, state-of-the-art production facility and head office in Aeroton, Johannesburg, which it opened in March 2022, SEW-EURODRIVE has progressively established all its assembly lines – for industrial gear units, motors, drives and related equipment and systems – at this site. Most recently, the electronics assembly line was relocated from CapeTown to the new production facility. Leigh Darroll spoke to Werner Engelbrecht, Electronics Operations Manager, and Robert Fletcher, Electronics Field ServiceTechnician, on site.

T he new facility reflects SEW-EURODRIVE’s confi dence in the growing African and South African mar kets and the company has made this investment to support its own forecast growth locally and across the con tinent. Importantly, Engelbrecht highlights that it enables the company to streamline all its operations at this centralised site. It also allows for a broader range of SEW-EURODRIVE’s products and capabilities to be assembled and delivered locally. For instance, he says, electronics assembly and al lied systems were previously assembled at the production facility in Cape Town. With the new centralised facility, effi ciencies in output are immediately realised and the modu lar product makes more variations available to customers – plus the benefits of reduced lead times on meeting new orders, or in handling maintenance diagnostics and the turnaround on repairs. He notes too, that it supports the more interactive approach the company is taking in work ing with its customers to develop automation solutions with them – as their needs or new requirements evolve. Fletcher highlights that SEW-EURODRIVE is working more closely with customers to find out what they need and to set out the broader scope of services that it offers

Robert Fletcher, Electronics Field Service Technician at SEW-EURODRIVE.

Werner Engelbrecht, Electronics Operations Manager at SEW-EURODRIVE.

– to support customers in improving production efficien cies, advancing plant automation, or creating automation solutions for specific operational requirements. Customers have welcomed this approach as it opens up new opportu nities for them to boost their plant performance. A walk through the new production space at the 26 000‑m 2 headquarters makes the streamlining of the assembly operations and output clear, particularly in the case of the mechatronics assembly. The layout is modelled similarly to that in SEW-EURODRIVE’s showcase factory in Graben Neudorf in Germany, designed to optimise efficiencies. Globally, SEW-EURODRIVE offers a multitude of possi ble combinations of motors and gear units, plus custom ised modifications within those. This indicates the complex ity of bringing all the correct components together for each unique unit to match the standards of quality for which the company is recognised – and demands precision and or der. Like all its facilities worldwide, the Johannesburg oper ation is networked to the global SEW-EURODRIVE systems. As work begins on assembling a new unit, for instance, the system sets out the parts to be selected from stores and the assembly instructions for the unit (according to the work order), in a standard works procedure and these are presented on a PC interface, at the assembly line, to provide a quick, easy reference for the technician handling the assembly. This simplifies and concentrates the work the assembly technician or team needs to do – following a clear step-by-step process. Assemblies are checked au-

The MOVIGEAR ® production line at SEW-EURODRIVE’s facility.

10 Electricity + Control MAY 2024