Ariens Company has a history in manufacturing dating back to 1933, when Henry Ariens and his three sons developed the first American-made rotary tiller, and the company began manufacturing products for the agricultural industry.
Over the years, the Brillion, Wisconsin-based company expanded and added product offerings — entering the lawn mower market in the 1950s and the snow blower market in the 1960s. Today, the portfolio of brands includes some of the oldest and most respected names in the outdoor power equipment industry, including Ariens®, Gravely® and Sno-Tek®.
Ariens remains family-owned and operated, and is most known for snow blowers and lawn mowers. Customers expect a long-lasting product and support when they purchase an Ariens machine.
About 15 years ago, Ariens began practicing the principles of lean manufacturing, and it’s been an important part of daily life at the company ever since.
So when Ariens began experiencing problems with the robotic welding cells used in their manufacturing, it was an issue they wanted to address. Ariens implemented several PerformArc welding automation systems from Miller Electric Mfg. Co., resulting in major productivity gains and a noticeable reduction in downtime and service calls for the company.
Ariens has long used robotic welding on the manufacturing floor, but in recent years they started experiencing issues with their robotic welding equipment, resulting in lost productivity in the form of machine breakdowns and downtime for service.
Robotic tech support at Ariens was averaging more than 5,000 tech calls for robotic weld cell breakdowns annually, with each call averaging 13 minutes.
“Some of the older cells, if they had a crash they were down for hours, if not even longer,” says Ron Heiting, team leader in the arms group area, machine division, which builds manufacturing equipment used to make snow blowers and lawn mowers.
Due to the age of the previous robotic equipment, which was several decades old, the company was also seeing issues with availability of service, support and parts for maintenance and repair.
In searching for a solution, Ariens technicians and workers visited with several robotic equipment manufacturers and spent time at their facilities, including Miller. To start the process, Ariens sent some of their parts and fixturing to Miller to see how they would work with the PerformArc weld cells. A video showed the actual Ariens parts being welded with the PerformArc cells for the decision makers’ review.
Ariens converted several cells in various plants with five PerformArc 350 systems and one PerformArc 750 system. The high output systems offer a full range of welding processes and come completely pre-wired and pre-assembled.
Ariens worked with Miller to customize the systems for their specific needs, programming the system with the logic layout that Ariens had been using throughout the plants. They also integrated the inputs and outputs for the Ariens fixtures, and upgraded the wiring and location of some switches on the cells.
“We customized some things to make it more user-friendly for what we do here,” Foytik says.
It was important for Ariens to keep productivity up during the weld cell changeover. A check list helped the company keep the implementation on track.
The units arrived about four to six weeks after the order, and Ariens had them in production within two weeks, after some on-site training at Ariens with a Miller technician.
The systems came in with the same Tregaskiss™ guns that Ariens had been using previously, which also helped with operator training and provided a seamless transition for the conversion.
Since implementing the PerformArc automated welding cells, Ariens has seen productivity increase by about 25 percent. The company has greatly reduced the amount of time lost to maintenance, repairs and tech calls.
“Tech calls are very minimal for these units,” Heiting says.
In the past, some areas couldn’t maintain expected daily production due to the older robotic welding cells.
The new cells let them quickly reset the arm in the event of an error recovery, so it doesn’t require a call to a technician for support. The machines go into soft servo mode when a reset is needed, which allows for rapid error recovery, and protects the robot and fixtures from damage.
The new cells also offer easier setup and make it quicker for operators to change from model to model. The addition of the offline programming gives Ariens the ability to go through the weld process virtually, so they can make fixtures that work for the robots from the start, without having to make changes on the fly once the process has begun. This Desk Top Programming and Simulation (DTPS) feature helps minimize production downtime, too, by allowing Ariens to program the parts faster with greater accuracy and more accurate costing.
In addition to keeping an eye on productivity, Ariens wants to ensure that any product going out the door is of the highest possible quality.
Issues using the previous robotic cells included weld spatter, missing welds and short welds.
After the PerformArc systems were implemented, quality increased dramatically.
The quick-change feature on the PerformArc cells is a big improvement, since Ariens runs so many different units. In the past, they would have to call a robotic technician to reprogram the cell every time they changed a model. With the quick change, they can push a button to change the program when they change models or go to a different chute or frame, for example.
The noticeable improvement in quality means a much cleaner product, which results in less time and money spent on rework for Ariens.
That has also helped Ariens reduce inventory levels in that department, from four big bins down to less than two.
The PerformArc systems offer Ariens flexibility to move the cells to a new location in their facility. The pre-engineered system has a fully welded frame, and they can simply be disconnected from utilities, relocated with a forklift and reconnected.
Ariens plans to move forward with more cell conversions to the Miller PerformArc systems, including four a year in one of their plants to replace 20 cells there.