Mevis invests in Metrios technology for measuring metal components

“We carry out highly intense inspection, even every half hour. Now our guys on the shop floor are in charge of everything, they are autonomous, they are the masters of their work”.

Mevis, leader in the production of the metal components.
 

For over 50 years, Mevis has been the leading manufacturer of metal components on the international market. The company's mission is clear: providing qualitatively superior and technologically excellent solutions, ahead of the times and needs of the market. For this purpose, the group constantly invests in developing pioneering solutions, focusing on and investing in production quality.

International success.
 

Mevis supplies major multinational market leaders, mainly in the automotive industry, which represents 70% of the company's turnover, followed by electromechanical, household appliaces and electrotechnical sectors. The company's main products include bent and printed wire parts, welded parts, assembled parts, strip springs, compression springs and tubular parts.

Dynamic and flexible production units.
 

The group has an extensive and advanced machine park including spring coiling machines, bending machines, torsion spring winding machines, automatic presses, welding plants, and of course, measuring machines. The company invests heavily in latest generation technology to keep a competitive edge in terms of quality, costs and development times.

 

Traditional instruments could no longer keep up with demanding production rates.
 

Quality is a major pillar in the company's business philosophy. It is a necessary aspect of every phase in the production process but requires particular attention in terms of cost containment.

Bruno Sartori, Head of Quality Control, explains how traditional measuring instruments were no longer capable of checking hundreds of parts:
 

“We used a classic cranked profile projector; we had to turn the dial to see the angles and to align the part. The results were highly subjective and the process was essentially very slow".

To meet elevated production demands, Mevis operators were carrying out the process controls.
 

“Our operators had to perform many measurements to guarantee the required level of quality. This lead to a considerable waste of time - up to 20 minutes were lost per code”.

The challeng for Bruno Sartori was the following: efficiency had to be improved in this phase, inspection time had to be reduced, and objective and indisputable result guaranteed. This would have significantly increased both productivity and the quality of parts We needed a tool that measured parts automatically and even better, several parts at a time.

The introduction of Metrios in the Mevis plants: Italy and Slovakia.
 

Today Mevis has three Metrios measuring machines installed in the Italian plant and one in Slovakia. In Italy, one machine was placed in the testing area and the other two on the shp floor.
 

“These machines measure all the bent and sheared small parts. And that's not all, we manage to measure all the parts that can fit within the field of view, even up to 20 at a time”.

“Take torsion springs, for instance, in just a few seconds we can detect the angles, lenght of the stems, diameters".
 

There was an evident increase in productivity after improving the inspection phase.
 

“What has changed since we introduced Metrios? We have already inserted more than 400 codes. This means that we have measured over 400 different parts and all the programs that can be pulled up at any time".

Mevis operatos can finally carry out inspections independently and are enthusiastic about using a high - tech tool in production.
 

“Two developers follow the programming. Each saved program is immediately available online; everything is conncected with Industry 4.0 technology. What's more, a single program can be used on multiple machines simultaneously. Several programs are prepared by the headquarters in Italy and also used in the Slovak plant”.

“Each operator on the shop floor has an ID badge and calls up the progam via barcode. All the measurements taken arrive directly to the server, ready to be processed. Previously everything had to be written by hand!”

We asked Bruno Sartori what he thinks the most tangible benefit is:
 

“In Mevis we carry out highly intense inspection, even every half hour. Our guys on the shop floor are in charge of everything and now they all want to use these machines because they can measure better, they are autonomous, indipendent, they are the masters of their work".