“The share of our installations at German customers is increasing,” says co-founder and business manager, Helmut De Roovere. “Not surprisingly, we have made significant efforts to gain a foothold in Germany, without losing the focus on our customers' home markets in Belgium and the Netherlands. In doing so, we have to acknowledge that our German customers are really attracted by the philosophy behind RoboJob: modern and flexible automation, data exchange and new production techniques are indeed the basic principles of Industry 4.0 ".
It should therefore come as no surprise that in the meantime Germany has become the most important market for RoboJob. “And that’s quite logical,” says Business Development Manager Jelle De Roovere. “Germany is as we know, the largest CNC market in Europe. Moreover the German market is experiencing pressure on prices and delivery times and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find skilled and flexible personnel there. Germany is now the largest market outside of the Benelux, our home market.”
All of RoboJob’s German customers have their own story, and RoboJob has nicely set these out on its website www.robojob.eu where these companies explain in their own words why they have automated, and why they have chosen RoboJob when doing this.
“I first saw RoboJob at a trade fair in Germany,” says RoboJob customer Markus Zaiser, business manager of Manfred Zaiser GmbH in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. “RoboJob presented the Turn-Assist on an Okuma machine and we were immediately impressed. We noticed just how compact this model was; interest was therefore quickly aroused,” says Zaiser. “Automation is important to us because it allows us to get more output from our machines. The high wage costs and significant competitive pressure forces us to find solutions, and we have now found these with RoboJob. We quickly sat round the table with RoboJob and naturally also made the comparison with other suppliers. Ultimately the decisive factors were the rapid changeover times in both the software and the configuration of the table. Moreover, the Turn-Assist was able to complete many of our requirements with the standard functions including controlling the pressure on the gripper fingers.”
We heard a similar story at Tridelta Magnetsysteme GmbH from Dortmund. "During an open day at Okuma we were able to see the strengths of the Turn-Assist with our own eyes," says business manager Martin Korte. “The choice for automation was rather from rational considerations: in order to be competitive and to reduce labour costs, we simply have to automate. Owing to the global nature of our market, we have to automate in order to survive and to be able to compete in a financially responsible manner. After we had seen RoboJob at Okuma, we started looking for references in the market and they also proved to recommend RoboJob to us. Our choice finally fell on the Turn-Assist 180. It goes without saying that the rapid set-up and changeover time is very important, but it was still the compactness, coupled with the broad applicability of workpieces which convinced us. The Turn-Assist 180 therefore meets our needs perfectly and we are extremely satisfied with it. That also applies to our operators, who work with it every day.”
Andreas Hetschel, production manager at Hetschel GmbH & Co. has a rather different story: he got to know RoboJob on Youtube: “That’s right” says Herschel, “For some time now, my brother and I have been saying that we should automate in order to get more output from our machines, whilst also keeping the workload human for our operators. Easier said than done. We have always been busy with innovation, and even for a while toyed with the idea of buying a robot, and then programming it ourselves. We just didn’t have a standard solution for this. Until we simply came across a film clip of RoboJob on Youtube. That changed everything. Our Turn-Assist 250 was installed on a Mazak Quick Turn Nexus 200 N in April this year. In doing this, what really blew our socks off was the speed at which this automation was put into place and with which we could set to work. We had NEVER expected that our Turn-Assist could be installed in just 3 days, and we that could then get to work unmanned and independently on day 4.
For the third year in succession RoboJob is taking part at the AMB Messe. This trade fair is taking place in Stuttgart from 13 to 17 September 2016. This is an excellent opportunity for German suppliers to see RoboJob’s standard products live at work. RoboJob is on stand 3A74 with its top products: the Turn-Assist 250 and Mill-Assist Essential.