Actu­ally, we were all set to go – with the blister lines for pack­aging a Covid drug prepped and ready for accep­tance testing – were it not for one small detail: the blis­ters that rolled off the line had a small dent on the film side.

The reason why the blis­ters were not up to scratch quickly became clear: the knocker units that dislodge the blis­ters from the suction belt were striking too hard. Little wonder given the maximum perfor­mance they have to deliver on a three-lane machine with a cycle rate of up to 700 blis­ters per minute. “It was basi­cally just a cosmetic problem, the blis­ters were still seal-tight,” explains Michael Mayer, Team Leader Coor­di­na­tion Projects & Assembly at Uhlmann. “But it wasn’t enough to satisfy our stan­dards.” Tobias Ego, Head of Assembly Synchro­ni­sa­tion, took up the matter as coor­di­nator and, together with the Synchro­niza­tion Assembly and Custom Engi­neering divi­sions, began to search for a solu­tion.

Foam was the solu­tion

The team quickly figured out what to do: The height of the knocker units had to be adjusted and addi­tion­ally fitted with foam for damping. But speed was of the essence – as Design Engi­neer Marco Zanker explains: “We managed, overnight, to produce the first plastic parts on the 3D printer. But the plastic parts from this rapid proto­typing process have a different center of gravity than the aluminum parts, which means that they also differ in terms of their impact force. So we had to approach the final design step by step.”

The cross-divi­sional team­work was incred­ibly good.

Serhat Toykan, Director Manu­fac­turing Axito

The team managed to master this chal­lenge, too, and the story would have ended with an order being sent to Axito who manu­fac­tured the aluminum knocker units. But this was no ordi­nary case, as Serhat Toykan, Director Manu­fac­turing at Axito, explains: “As it was both a very urgent and tricky job we were facing, we all got together to talk about how the different tasks should be shared. The cross-divi­sional team­work was incred­ibly good, with Michael Mayer super­vising every­thing, while, on Axito’s side, our Head of Oper­a­tion Philipp Fleis­cher and Andreas Hohnecker, Team Leader Oper­a­tions Control, took on the role of coor­di­na­tors.” Thanks to resourceful program­mers who coaxed as many “strikes” as possible out of the machine made of a single block, Axito managed to produce the first batch overnight.

But the team­work didn’t end there. It wasn’t just the produc­tion time that was tricky, but also the damping elements, as Team Leader Assembly Synchro­ni­sa­tion Andreas Russ explains: “The foam pieces that were glued to the aluminum parts were two millime­ters too wide – in other words, too much to leave on and too little to be able to cut cleanly.”

Indis­pens­able: our appren­tices

The team decided to get the appren­tice work­shop on board for gluing and processing the foam pieces. Trainer Matthias Hötzinger imme­di­ately set to work with the two appren­tices, Matthias Schenk and Simon Schwarz. To ensure that the preci­sion work could be carried out safely – without injuring fingers or damaging the aluminum – Marco Zanker and the appren­tice work­shop quickly designed protec­tive devices for the sanding blocks, which they then printed using the 3D rapid proto­typing process. “It’s so much fun working with these young people because they are just as keen to help opti­mize the parts,” says Zanker. And Hötzinger is also full of praise for his trainees: “They spent a week trim­ming the foam, gluing the 360 parts, sanding the rubber, and cleaning the parts without a grumble. And because it had to be done so quickly, there was no room for error. But it was a valu­able project in that it showed them that gluing parts is also impor­tant, and that we all pull together.”

In the end, it took three working days to get the first batch of 120 parts sent to our customers. And the team has learned just how effec­tive cross-company team­work can be. Coor­di­nator Michael Mayer sums it up like this: “What this story shows is that by working together we can make a differ­ence and make the seem­ingly impos­sible possible. Whether you look at the design, produc­tion, booking in and out, or trans­porta­tion of the parts, it was, in every respect, a great collab­o­ra­tive effort that helped our customers.”

The main players in this “knocker” project were:

AXITO: Serhat Toykan (Director Manu­fac­turing), Philipp Fleis­cher (Head of Oper­a­tion), Andreas Hohnecker (Team Leader Oper­a­tions Control), Edin Lihovic (Oper­a­tions Planner), Wolf­gang Hörmann (Oper­a­tions Planner) Program­ming: Herbert Wäspy; machine oper­a­tors: Florian Egle, Mehmet Mutluer, Elvis Arnau­tovic, Karl Wicker, Stefan Locher

Assembly: Tobias Ego (Head of Assembly Synchro­ni­sa­tion), Dirk West­en­berger (Assembly Tech­ni­cian), Andreas Russ (Team Leader Assembly Synchro­ni­sa­tion)

Custom Engi­neering: Marco Zanker (Design Engi­neer)

Appren­tice work­shop: Matthias Hötzinger (Voca­tional Trainer), Matthias Schenk (mecha­tronics engi­neer), and Simon Schwarz (‘Ulm Model’ Elec­trical Engi­neering)

Plan­ning & Control: Michael Mayer (Team Leader Coor­di­na­tion Projects & Assembly) and Michael Mayer (Coor­di­nator Projects & Assembly)

SCM: Katha­rina Henkel (Team Leader Commer­cial Parts), Simon-Norman Nitschke (Head of Oper­a­tional Procure­ment)

WE: Katha­rina König (Commer­cial Ware­house Specialist)

Vehicle fleet: Clemens Habdank (driver)