Musashi makes shot blast performance visible and actionable
Musashi, the Japanese automotive supplier, has digitized the first of four Wheelabrator shot-blasting machines at its plant in northern Germany with Monitizer. The goal: make blast operations visible and deliver improvements across production efficiency, cost calculation, and sustainability.
At the plant, Musashi produces high-quality forged and rolled components for major car manufacturers - on seven presses, five furnaces and four shot-blasting machines. The blast process removes mill scale formed during annealing.
Gaining deeper visibility into production performance
The latest addition to shot-blast operations at Musashi arrived in 2023. The Wheelabrator TUMBLAST® machine came equipped with a NoriGate data interface and was therefore digitally ready. Digitizing the machine using Monitizer | DISCOVER was an ideal opportunity to explore the potential of a digital shot-blasting process.
The Monitizer installation on the machine comes with pre-configured dashboards tailored by the Wheelabrator team. It also integrates seamlessly into Musashi’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES), enabling more comprehensive analysis of, for example, consumption data on a product run basis.
Sebastian Riesch, Production Manager at Musashi, explains: "MES systems are heavily focused on production management but do not map individual machines in detail. With Monitizer, we gain greater visibility into the machine, allowing us to precisely capture the technical process. This also helps with cost calculation, as we can finally view and compare actual consumption figures for specific products."
Turning insights into operational improvements
An important quick win of the project was the prevention of over- and under-blasting caused by deviations from specified blasting times. Under-blasting can result in rejects in quality control and subsequent reprocessing, while over-blasting increases the treatment cost per part. If batches are consistently blasted for 16 minutes instead of the specified 12 minutes, that result in 33% higher energy and blast media costs, as well as unnecessary wear. Ensuring compliance with optimum blast cycle times doesn’t just save money, it can also create extra production capacity per shift.
Oliver Pust, Hot Forming Supervisor at Musashi, adds: "Digitalizing the shot-blast machine with Monitizer was straightforward and quickly paid off. It helps us optimize processes, identify error sources quickly, and ensure quality in the long term. We see potential for productivity gains of up to 20% if we extend the system to the other three blast machines."