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.

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.