ENGEL St. Valentin Wins Production Contest
In the production contest organised by Fraunhofer Austria and the Industriemagazin, ENGEL’s large-tonnage machine plant in St. Valentin won the title of “Factory of the Year 2023”. It was thus named the best production company in Austria. Together with the other ENGEL production sites, the plant forms a global and high-performance network for manufacturing at the cutting edge of technology.
As part of the factory conference held in Bludenz (Vorarlberg) in autumn, ENGEL St. Valentin was awarded the overall prize and the “Efficient Factory” category. “The winning work by ENGEL is characterised by very good or excellent results across all competition categories,” said the jury. Critical success factors were the consistent sustainability strategy and the pioneering role in digitalisation.
Outstanding Assembly Principle
In addition, the well-thought-out manufacturing process contributed to the award. “The right layouts and transport routes are significant for their part weights of up to 150 tons. The implementation must be clean and coordinated,” plant manager Martin Weger explains. One project that considers this approach was the expansion and redesign of the flow assembly. The assembly principle, in which the closing and clamping units of the machine are initially manufactured and assembled separately, is outstanding in unique machine construction. With the recently implemented optimisations, the plant’s performance limit has been increased by 15 per cent, and throughput times have been reduced by 65%.
Efficiency Thanks to Automation
The jury saw the intelligent C-parts management as another highlight. This is the automated reordering of consumables, such as screws. Using automated guided vehicles for tool dispensing and the highly automated milling centres were also convincing.
“Thanks to these measures, our specialists can take on more demanding and complex tasks,” reports Martin Weger. In 2024, the competition will host its final in St. Valentin.
