We want to make customers independent

What are the intelligent mechatronic solutions for the factory of the future? Luca Pantaleoni, End User Sales Manager at Bosch Rexroth, talked to us about this topic during his speech at the Assembly Week. The aim of Bosch Rexroth, he told us, is no longer just to supply high quality components, but also and above all to make the customer independent and able to speed up integration and programming times.

Bosch Rexroth is a concern that has been producing and marketing drive and control technologies for many years. Could you provide us with a brief overview of the company, its history, values and mission?

Our history goes back a long way, when Robert Bosch was born in 1861, Georg Ludwig Rexroth II bought the last forge in the company’s history. Since 1954, in Milan, Italy, the Ruhrital company has been distributing Rexroth products. Bosch Rexroth is one of the world’s leading suppliers of drive and control technology. The Italian representative of the group has therefore been present in the country for more than 60 years and its headquarters are located in Cernusco sul Naviglio, near Milan. In these years of technological revolution and innovation, the company has become a consolidated reality in the Italian industrial context, also thanks to a sales network with national coverage and more than 40 authorised distributors and service partners.
Bosch Rexroth Italia combines strong experience and expertise on the territory, industrial and multi-technological know-how to support its customers. This is possible also thanks to a product portfolio with specialised technologies and a global and widespread service on the local territory. The Italian headquarters are home to the Innovation Lab & Customer Center, a space designed to welcome customers and where it is possible to view and touch products thanks to the reproduction of the operation of a fully 4.0 line. At the same time, the Innovation Lab has become a permanent exhibition of Rexroth products in Italy.
Our vision: “We Move. You Win”, creating movement is the driving force. Bosch Rexroth’s commitment to its customers is clear: to help them be successful. This is the source of the unbreakable partnership between the new corporate culture and the products it offers.
Our brand, “Rexroth-A Bosch Company”, communicates the strong identity of Bosch Rexroth. It is part of a strong and innovative industrial concern, but at the same time it is independent and autonomous. It is a company which, no matter how big it is, supports all its customers closely and looks to the future. For customers, this means productive, state-of-the-art solutions which stand out because they are safe, intelligent, and powerful. Our global figures: turnover of around 5.2 billion Euro in 2020 and around 29,600 employees worldwide.

Bosch Rexroth’s philosophy in recent years is not just to provide a so-called best-performance single product, but a service. I am thinking of your Smart MechatroniX platform, a complete solution combining the best components of Linear Motion technology with electronics, sensors and software. Could you tell us about it? And what are the Smart Function Kits?

Exactly, Smart Mechatronics is the range which best represents this approach and this revolution. At Bosch Rexroth we are changing the way we do automation: the approach has changed, performance and quality are now at the heart of our products, and we want to create solutions. OEMs who buy a product like this are looking for a solution allowing them to concentrate on the study of their machine or assembly line, and End Users who want a product like this are those who want to be autonomous masters of their process.
Smart Function Kits are kits, as their name implies, which already include everything necessary to be able to work, they are no longer simple components, but subgroups allowing customers to work faster, with the configuration tool on the internet it is no longer necessary to carry out complex dimensioning, with the preloaded SW there is no need to create an infrastructure which has to be written from scratch, the configuration system gives value to the technicians who become the real masters of the machine and the station. What do they look like? We can talk about SFKs for pressing and for handling, in fact they are the sum of linear technologies (electric cylinders, linear axes) and electronics, motors, PLC drives and PCs. Having these components already assembled gives rise to a cell allowing a job to be carried out, but the big advantage is that the functions are all already stored in the SW in the PC and by means of a simple drag and drop the necessary cycle can be created, whether it is a press or a pick and place. All the data are already integrated and managed, and can be shared horizontally or vertically with supervisory software, and so on.
This transformation began a few years ago, when we realised that our plants needed autonomy and speed to adapt to the market. The first configurable product was probably the class A screwdriver, where we are the only ones to have streamlined its architecture by 50%; now, with the NEXO system, only the screwdriver is needed, the control unit and the SW are integrated directly in the machine, which makes the use of the system leaner, faster and more effective. The second product was the guided conduct system for operators, which follows operators by constantly assisting them to maintain the right process and quality, then the Active Cockpit, a SW enabling management and control of all factory data (OEE, scrap, presence of employees and so on). Two years ago the first Smart Function Kit for pressing and now the ones for handling. The latter are used extensively in pick & place lines, but also in transport lines used for diverting, in the medical or pharmaceutical sector for end-of-line management and for products more delicate than raw cast iron.

As we were saying before, the customer no longer cares about buying a product for its performance, because that is assumed to be the best; rather, the customer is looking for the easiest solution to configure and use, which generally ensures independence from an experienced programmer, and above all which adapts as quickly as possible. Is this correct? Where does the Bosch Rexroth range stand in this respect?

With Bosch Rexroth, customers can really take their fate into their own hands. In the past, factories were forced to over-structure in order to be able to respond to all requirements or go looking for support from outside with costs and time which complicated project management. Today, thanks to this new philosophy, customers must know their process, it is the only skill required, there is no longer a need for an electrician, a programmer of a specific language and a mechanic, it is necessary to know how to produce and what to achieve. This involves a considerable time saving for manufacturers who, instead of having to make mechanical calculations, interface with the electronics department, study the cable routing, find a single object configured on the internet where they can use drag and drop to set up a work cycle and use a simple REST communication to interface at all levels. In this way manufacturers can add value to their ideas, experience and know-how. The world today is moving more and more towards open protocols, increasing interaction between different objects, and this is how Bosch Rexroth has always set out its philosophy in technologies. We have always been permeated by interaction with other objects on a line as well as on a machine, and today we are demonstrating with our platform that we allow this interaction, and we are demonstrating it at all levels, whether we are talking about data management or the individual machine process. The solution is the key, even we who are and remain component manufacturers no longer interact only with a specific department, but we endeavour to look beyond the component, we have a vast experience and it is time to make it available even beyond specific requests, that is why in our technical departments we have people who have experience in machine construction or as line builders to give this different vision, to be really close to our customers and to be able to tune in to their problems.

So far we have talked about configurable and adaptable kits and solutions within the Smart MechatroniX range, but can a customer turn to Bosch Rexroth for a customised solution for special requirements? For instance for clean room applications.

Absolutely, as I told you before, we are always a component manufacturer, but this is where you cut me to the quick. In just a few days we shall be sending a conveyor line to a customer who has asked us for extreme performance. The conveyor will have to work in a clean room much cleaner than an operating theatre, and this line includes our conveyor in a special version and our axles, a sort of SFK for handling, but also one suitable for that type of clean room. Once we understood the customer’s requirements, we worked with him to modify, move and readapt them after understanding his real needs; we analysed our product range and established the modifications to be made to them, we made POCs, demos and now we are delivering the complete line. The customer trusted us because he understood that the challenge was his, but also a little bit ours: together we went to the final customer to present the project and together we worked for the result, this is what we mean by partnership.
Our strong point is to study customised solutions and push the limits of the products further and further. We also believe that with these new SFK products, ctrlX AUTOMATION, collaborative robots, AGVs, innovations on conveyor lines, guided ducts for operators, new solutions on screwdrivers, we are able to cover 95% of the market requirements.

Let us round off our chat by looking to the future: what are Bosch Rexroth’s next goals for assembly and for mechatronics in general? Are we moving towards Industry 5.0?

Bosch Rexroth intends to invest more and more in mechatronics, expanding current know-how with increasingly open and friendly-to-use solutions, we see these ideas for the Factory-of-the-Future. We have a high level of experience which has been requested by major Italian customers, which we have catalogued in our solutions. What I mean is that on new applications we exploit ideas which we have not abandoned over time, but we reuse them confident that we are anticipating customers’ problems and needs. Bosch Rexroth will increasingly consolidate what we have done so far with SKF, and the biggest steps will be taken by ctrlX AUTOMATION, the electronics platform which marks a generational change in the industrial world for automation management, we like to think of it as the same type of revolution brought about by the smartphone! And for many things, that is exactly what it is.
These new frontiers are creating solutions which we are implementing in the world of electronic components, in the automotive sector, with particular focus on Tier 1, in off-road, but also in markets such as pharmaceuticals, medical and food. Markets with high demands in terms of cycle times and quality, and with this new philosophy we want to make them even more efficient. Our aim is to make it easier for our customers to work and to increase the value of their process know-how. We make factories leaner in order to leave the value on the know-how of the people, we like to say “Like a Bosch”.
I would like to conclude with a little gem, so new that few of us know about it yet, a new solution which does not currently exist on the market: it is called the Smart Flex Effector. Let us imagine that we have to position a chip or a shaft of an electric motor, but that the tolerances become increasingly precise in order to maximise the efficiency of the finished product. When the robot, due to backlash, tolerances or other issues, fails to perform its cycle correctly, the Smart Flex Effector understands what the problem is and gives feedback to the robot, which adjusts the trajectory and finishes the cycle correctly. The other main function is to help in the commissioning of stations, line builders who have to commission and steer the robot (always Cartesian or anthropomorphic robots) in Jog can, with the help of the Smart Flex Effector, do the job on the first try guided by the sensors which enable it to acquire the correct altitude immediately. This is an object which does not exist, and, following our principles, we create new things to improve our world.