Challenge
Halden Motors was converting a van plant to electric drivetrains while the building kept producing diesel vans. The new battery tray line had to be installed, wired and commissioned on a live site, with production next door running three shifts.
The line itself was twelve robot cells from two different robot vendors, each with its own controller, safety logic and way of reporting faults. Halden needed them to behave like one line, run by one team, from one control station.
Approach
We took responsibility for everything between the robots: the line controller, the safety architecture, the electrical design of each cell and the operator interface.
One interface for two vendors
Every cell talks to the line controller through the same small set of signals: ready, running, done, fault and a reason code. Vendor-specific logic stays inside the cell. Operators learn one screen, and a replacement cell from either vendor drops in without rewriting the line.
Safety designed as a system
Guarding, light curtains and safety zones were designed across the whole line rather than cell by cell. The heavy handling arm at the end of the line runs behind clear polycarbonate panels, so maintenance crews can see the arm before they open anything. Every safety function was validated against the risk assessment before power was applied to a single motor.
Commissioned before it arrived
We built a virtual model of the line and ran the real controller code against it for six weeks before the first robot was delivered. By the time the hardware reached the plant, sequences, interlocks and fault recovery had already been tested thousands of times.
Validation
Three cells were assembled and run at our site for factory acceptance. On site, cells were brought up in pairs during weekend shutdowns, and the full line ran at reduced speed for two weeks before Halden signed the site acceptance test.
Outcome
The line was commissioned in six weeks on a live site and now runs at a 58-second cycle with a first-pass yield of 99.4%. Operators run all twelve cells from one station, and Halden has since ordered a second line on the same architecture.
