ITALY – SCM, Italian specialist in technology for panel processing, is preparing for the next edition of Ligna (Hannover, May 27 – 31, 2019) backed by a turnover at the end of 2018 that exceeds 700 million and a technological proposal increasingly closer to the demands of industry 4.0.

In a stand of more than 4000 m2 installed in Hall 13, SCM will present its “Smart & Human Factory”, an innovative production model based on digital and automation systems capable of guaranteeing an advanced man-machine interaction and total control of the complete production flow. A model based on extremely innovative systems, flexible, modular and easy to reconfigure, designed to give effective and rapid responses to the challenges of mass customization. A new factory “smart and human” that marks a moment of evolution at the production level. Thanks to the integration of robotics, the operator is freed from repetitive activities and of low added value.

“Ligna 2019 will be one of the international appointments of SCM, historical and reliable partner of the wood sector. We will present a technological innovation at the highest level, capable of boosting the companies’ business and satisfying the new requirements related to industry 4.0. The new production trends, the main theme of the next edition of Ligna, will generate an important gap between companies with a higher or lower level of automation. Offering a model of interaction between machine, industrial and collaborative robotics, transport logistics and software, SCM intends to help the companies with which it collaborates to move in a feasible, correct and winning direction”, explains Luigi De Vito, SCM director.

The slogan “You will never work alone” synthesizes the objective of the new offer of SCM: to favor a friendly automation for the machining of the board with the possibility of reconfiguring the process whenever it is necessary, to satisfy lots “order to production” now increasingly smaller and in the shortest time possible.

After previewing a working application of its “Smart&Human Factory” at the Open House 2019 event on January at the company’s Technology Center of Rimini (Italy), SCM will showcase an even richer version at the next Ligna. An automated system for all the phases of furniture production will be presented: from furniture designing to the generation of machine programs and from panel processing to cabinet assembling.

The process aims at optimizing as much as possible panel cutting, edgebanding and drilling operations, so as to reduce waste, rejects and retooling requirements during product changeovers, to then reassemble orders back together at the end of the process and delaying customization until this stage.
With this system, low-added value and repetitive human tasks are minimized, thanks to the use of KUKA industrial anthropomorphic robots, assisted by collaborative Universal Robots in the final process stages (assembly, hardware insertion, glue dispensing and surface finishing) and ensuring totally safe conditions without the use of enclosures. Finally, process logistics are made flexible thanks to the use of MiR intelligent autonomous self-driving shuttles. The entire process will be managed and supervised by the Maestro Watch supervision software – monitoring the state of each of the products being machined throughout the process, and by the IoT Maestro Connect system – which collects and analyses SCM technology data, ensuring on the one hand full control over the production flow and, on the other, the implementation of smart predictive maintenance models.