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ComauFlex is more than a flexible production system-it's a modern modular manufacturing strategy
As automotive manufacturers around the world begin to invest in products and components made with a variety of advanced lightweight materials, the ComauFlex body shop solution-developed and refined over the past decade-has been demonstrating how it can accommodate dissimilar materials while incorporating a wide range of processes. By optimizing the layout of working areas using modular, integrable and inherently flexible systems, this manufacturing approach has proven itself to be a cost-effective solution for the times.
Comau, which is based in Turin, Italy, and has North American offices in Southfield, Ml, has more than 40 years of experience providing production systems, including complete body shops. And it believes ComauFlex is much more than a body shop solution, referring to the system as an "advanced manufacturing strategy."
Built from the ground up to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) meet the dynamic changes and demands in the market, ComauFlex provides solutions required by today's car manufacturers: operational flexibility, minimum facility requirements, high volumes and multiple models, along with the possibility of using advanced material joining technologies. In other words, ComauFlex modernizes the traditional concept of the production factory.
"The ComauFlex philosophy is the culmination of an evolution of assembly processes and components that Comau has developed and refined over the last 10 years," said Ennio Chiatante, Comau Global Solutions Development Product Engineering & Management Director.
Chiatante said ComauFlex provides "extreme operational versatility" to automotive manufacturers in terms of volume, number of models, production logistics management and use of advanced materials, like aluminum and high strength steels. That means the companies that have adopted the system receive "significant savings in terms of time, long-term costs and improvements in operational efficiency," he said.
Among the automakers using the ComauFlex system, or its components, include Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA). In one plant, the ComauFlex has enabled Fiat to produce two very different models, the Fiat 500 and Fiat Freemont, on the same lines. Ford Motor Co. also uses the system to build its new Ford F-150, which has been redesigned to feature a body made primarily of aluminum.
ComauFlex enables Ford to enhance production capabilities, reduce workin-process, improve material logistics, save energy and minimize the floor space...