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Automotive Industry

Montaplast GmbH

Visualisation of a plant for the final assembly of air dampers in the Morsbach plant

The company

Albert Stulz Sr. founded Montaplast GmbH in 1958. Initially specializing in the development and production of precision plastic parts for household appliances, Montaplast now manufactures high-quality plastic systems for the automotive industry. By replacing metal components, Montaplast products offer all the advantages needed to meet the demands placed on modern automobiles. These include the continuously improved safety and stability of vehicles as well as the optimization of environmental compatibility, design and comfort. In addition to plastic systems for the engine compartment, Montaplast develops production parts for the interior and exterior of cars.

With three international production sites in Morsbach, Frankfort/Kentucky (USA) and Suzhou (Shanghai) as well as several global sales offices, Montaplast is one of the most important suppliers to the automotive industry worldwide.

Task and solution

The new section of the plant in Morsbach for the final assembly and quality control of plastic air flap controls required a way to record measurement data and error messages in a database. A web frontend was to provide convenient access to this data. Furthermore, the task was to create a visualization to display the process flow.

The plant, which consists of two lines, has two SIMATIC S7-315 controllers that are connected to the system via Ethernet to record the measurement data.

In line 1, screws and bushings are installed in the air flap controls. Since several parts can be processed simultaneously in one station, it is possible to see directly via the visualization at which position a part is defective (NIO) or defect-free (IO). This measurement data is recorded in a database and can be called up via a web front end for each part. In this way, the course of the process is accurately logged and made traceable.

To the air damper controls declared as "IO" in line 1, the motor is added in the second line. In the rework mode of this line, the IO parts of line 1 are reworked. Deficiencies in the quality of a part are, for example, screws or bushings that are too loose.

The air flap control is then subjected to an automatic check, NIO parts are separated from IO parts by a conveyor belt and also reworked. The cycle time for a part is very short, so the system has a very high throughput.

A constant exchange of data between the controllers and the database ensures that it is possible to call up at any time whether a part is IO or NIO, thus ensuring a high level of quality of the air flap controls. Due to the accurate logging, any errors that may occur can be quickly corrected.

Furthermore, the evaluation of a part is possible even after a longer period of time, if a part subsequently shows an error.

At the so-called manual workstation, the logs of the processed parts can be called up directly via a barcode system. Using a hand scanner, the specific data of the respective part is displayed in the web front end on the associated computer. No special software is required for this; a standard browser is sufficient for calling up the data.

In addition, the web interface can be called up via the visualization of the two operator stations, based on Wizcon Supervisor.

The project in compact

Final assembly of air damper controls

  •     two lines (final assembly and quality inspection)
  •     special machine construction


Automation technology

  •     Siemens S7 315 2DP
  •     Wizcon Supervisor 9.3
  •     MSSQL database
  •     Web-Frontend with ASP.NET Ethernet coupling to S7-300