VITEBSK, 16 July (BelTA) – The first robotic line of the footwear manufacturing division in Belwest Company will switch to continuous operation this autumn, BelTA learned from Ruslan Pavlov, Director of OOO LACIT, the company that designed the robotic line.
Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko visited Belwest's manufacturing division as part of a working trip to Vitebsk Oblast on 16 July. The prime minister saw how Industry 4.0 technologies are implemented into the footwear manufacturing process.
As part of an ongoing experiment industrial robots already take care of a number of routine operations starting with defect identification and ending with pattern cutting. A human specialist just needs to place a semi-finished product at the start. All the consequent operations do not require human interference. Machine vision is used to detect leather defects. The system boasts a high defect identification rate and can do it properly because the subjective factor is ruled out. Then the parts are placed in an effective way. Then the semi-finished product is moved from one robot cluster to another and the robots perform certain operations.
Ruslan Pavlov said: “One robot cluster can process 150 parts per shift. We intend to switch to three shifts in autumn. In other words, the line will operate non-stop.”
LACIT's software allows fully automating control over the manufacturing process.
OOO LACIT was established on the basis of SOOO Belwest's IT division in 2017. OOO LACIT is part of the footwear holding company Belwest. LACIT is a resident company of Belarus' Hi-Tech Park. It specializes in software development, manufacturing automation services powered by automatic video analysis, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
