As a manufacturer of highly customized ambulances, Life Line Emergency
Vehicles places extreme focus on the quality, safety and durability of their
products, recognizing the critical role that they play in saving lives
daily. While the end-user EMT and patient are at the heart of their
company’s mission, Life Line has long been driven by a desire to do right by
its employee-owners as well. Recently, that meant addressing one of the most
physically challenging aspects in their manufacturing process—the sanding
and finishing of ambulance truck bodies.
A tedious task, the finishing process traditionally involved an
employee-owner climbing up and down ladders, dragging hoses and other
equipment around the vehicle, and putting stress on their knees and legs as
they had to navigate crawling over metal truck roofs. Not only was this
process deemed a least favorite by employees, it was a difficult task to
recruit and retain labor for.
With that in mind, Life Line began the search for a robot that could perform
the same quality of sanding and finishing currently done by employees. They
were looking for a true partner integrator, someone who would not just sell
them a robot, but an entire system designed to their unique needs, with
ongoing support to sustain and optimize the automation process.
GrayMatter Robotics, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator, uses proprietary
AI designed into smart robotic cells to assist with exactly the kind of
tedious and ergonomically challenging tasks faced by Life Line. Their
solutions are tuned for the variations and variabilities in specialty
vehicle manufacturing, enabling them to work on nearly any part within
minutes while delivering faster and more consistent results.
In this case, GrayMatter Robotics provided a single FANUC M-710 series
robotic arm and rail configured system, which is ideal for sanding and
particularly efficient. Using this standardized solution, set up and
operation was facilitated quickly, with the GrayMatter Robotics team
troubleshooting as needed to increase efficiency even further through
incremental improvements.
Since then, Life Line has realized a 30-40 percent reduction in process time
for the finishing of each specialty vehicle, while being able to reassign
employee-owners to other priority roles on the manufacturing floor.