Founded in 1762, Olofsfors AB is a successful Swedish developer and manufacturer of boron steel products for forestry and construction industries. Its headquarters and sole factory are located in the city of Nordmaling, some 600 kilometers North of Stockholm. Here a fleet of over 30 ABB robots are involved in material handling and arc welding.

ABB has a long and successful relationship with Olofsfors which has steadily grown since the company purchased its first ABB robot, an IRB 2400, some 15 years ago. In 2016 Olofsfors contracted ABB’s service team for a lifecycle analysis to uncover the robot fleet’s service needs. Robot service had earlier been handled internally or via non-ABB vendors. The study found four arc welding IRB 1400 robots in the obsolete life cycle phase, which means that neither this robot model nor spare parts are being manufactured. Following ABB’s performance improvement advice, Olofsfors placed a replacement order for four brand new IRB 1600ID robots and positioners.

Impressed by the results of the robot lifecycle analysis, ABB’s service recommendations and thorough service protocols, Olofsfors awarded ABB a three year service agreement for improved performance, availability and extended robot fleet lifetime. The contract covers preventive maintenance, six hour guaranteed onsite response time, Life Cycle Management and ABB Ability Connected Services.

“We set up a meeting between Olofsfors and one of our largest automotive Tier 1 customers that had connected their robot fleet to ABB Ability Connected Services and asked them to share their experiences. Listening to the perceived benefits from another ABB customer helped Olofsfors quickly see the value of ABB Ability Connected Services in optimizing the performance of their own robot systems,” says Anders Lundkvist, a Regional Sales Manager, Sweden, ABB. 

“Understanding what ABB Ability could do for us, convinced us to connect all our robots with four of the five services in the ABB Ability Connected Services suite: Condition Monitoring and Diagnostics, Backup Management, Fleet Assessment, and Asset Optimization. We plan to mirror the MyRobot dashboard on screens in the factory to always be able to get a quick status overview. We also know we can depend on ABB to keep an extra eye on our robots remotely, should anything unexpected occur,” says Leif Ake Holmlund, Maintenance Manager, Olofsfors, Nordmaling, Sweden.

ABB began connecting its robots to advanced services in 2007, and today some 7,000 ABB robots are connected to the ABB Ability Connected Services platform, at more than 750 customer sites, in 40 countries, with more than 40,000 robots delivered with embedded connectivity. Every new ABB robot can be connected to the Internet of Things to unlock leading digital technologies for greater performance and reliability.

“Since Olofsfors was ready to get closer to the digital factory and had started to use the myABB business portal, we set up a myABB training session with a group of users from Olofsfors on how to download documentation, check the availability and price of spare parts, and how to purchase spare parts online,” continues Anders.

myABB business portal is a digital tool, available 24/7 for all ABB customers, providing value in optimizing lifecycle management, improving asset performance and boosting operational efficiency.

“The service agreement with ABB is a perfect match for us, while we need to move from traditional “break and fix” maintenance on individual robots towards advanced supervision of our fleet of over 30 robots. This makes sense with an increasing number of robots and makes it much easier to plan our service needs. The built-in connectivity of ABB’s robots and the benefits of connecting them to the ABB Ability Connected Services platform are key enablers of this transition. Moving forward, we will continue to connect future ABB robots and register all other ABB products via myABB,” says Leif Ake in closing.

With one of Northern Sweden’s largest robot fleets, Olofsfors needs a strong robot service organization to support its growth today and in the future. Looking beyond 2017, ABB will, together with a local partner, upgrade one cell with both new robots and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). As the Olofsfors plant gets more digital, ABB becomes a reliable partner always with the latest technology.