Rieter

General

Index

In modern spinning mills the cost of transporting materials has become the largest component of direct labor costs. Systems automating can and  package transport have therefore been developed and supplied for some years. However, savings on labor costs are only sufficient to amortize these systems partially over an economically justifiable period of time. Other cost-relevant reasons for using these systems are therefore:

  • preventing damage to slivers and yarn which is often unavoidable during manual transport of these packages;
  • increasing output through more uniform utilization of machine capacity and reduction of downtime (cans that have to be changed or packages that have to be removed from the machine conveyor belt no longer depend on the availability of personnel);
  • reducing movements of material (both of the raw material and of spinning cans and yarn packages) and thus reducing or eliminating storage areas;
  • no confusion between different feed materials (sliver counts);
  • and finally cost benefits due to improved overview of material flow and simplified planning and control of material throughput.

All the necessary systems are now available for processlinking automation in rotor spinning mills, i.e. for material transport (empty and full spinning cans and cross-wound packages) between the individual process stages. These systems are supplied in different versions and various degrees of automation. Nevertheless, in contrast to machine automation, which is standard equipment on high-performance spinning machines, transport automation has not established itself to the same extent. The reasons for this are many and varied, and certainly also very different in significance from mill to mill. However, there is no question that the use of semi-automatic or fully automated transport systems can make a contribution toward ensuring competitiveness, especially in countries with high labor costs.

On the basis of experience in a large number of spinning mills that have switched to automated transport systems it can be seen that the following conditions must be created and the following principles observed and adhered to for the successful implementation of this kind of project.

In the planning phase the management of the spinning mill must be convinced that the decision in favor of an automated transport system is correct and must also encourage acceptance of it by personnel. Mill management must already analyze operating processes at the planning stage and prepare the appropriate reorganization of operations. The more thorough the preparation phase, the easier its introduction and the greater its success will be.

Optimum adaptation to existing processes is achieved by the careful choice of interfaces between (any planned) manual and automated sub-processes. The possibility of step-by-step commissioning or staggered implementation should be examined.

The transition from purely manually operated to semi-automatic or fully automated systems has far-reaching consequences. The changes in work content are considerable. Manual transport activities are replaced by monitoring, trouble-shooting and maintenance activities. Personnel with higher or completely different qualifications must be provided for this purpose. Intensive training of this personnel is an essential precondition for successful, trouble-free operation of the system!

The new jobs usually extend over several of the previous process stages; machine allocation and thus working areas are usually larger. Operating and management personnel also need to be trained accordingly with this in mind.