Located in Frederikshavn, in the northern part of Denmark, the facility stands out in the relatively flat landscape around the Knivholt area of the town - it’s an impressive exhibition window for Martin products, particularly its architectural lighting ranges, which are a relatively new, but fast-expanding, part of the Martin business. Its design owes something to the industry it serves - the support infrastructure features 455 tons of roof truss - influenced, no doubt, by the touring and performance systems Martin works with every day of the year. Its lighting likewise: 70 Exterior 600s, 140 Exterior 200s and 24 MAC 2000 Performance spots, controlled by a LightJockey system, provide both internal and external illumination of the building.
The Happy Factory’s genesis was probably inevitable: it became clear that the plant at Saltebakken in Frederikshavn had become too small to keep pace with the company’s ambitious growth strategy, so teams of technicians and engineers were assembled and handed the task of addressing the problem. Over eight months they considered all the possible solutions, a number of concepts were then evaluated and an analysis of future products and market conditions were fed in to the algorithm. One solution emerged - a high tech assembly plant with an advanced logistics system that would provide the potential for long-term future growth.
Workers and contractors then started to convert the drawings into something more tangible - 35 employees from production were partially relieved of their duties and placed in teams. These teams then planned the layout of the new factory, and were asked to prepare operation manuals with a detailed description of the work processes in their department. A central figure in all of this was Thomas Raunsbaek, plant manager at the Saltebakken site, and earmarked as the factory manager of the new facility. He liaised with the architects, planners, fire officers and associated players needed to get the project off the ground.
With approval gained in November 2001, construction began a month later, and in August last year the building was completed and the company began to move in. The ultimate goal was to have the plant ready for trial production on Monday September 2, 2002 - a target that was met.
The result is an amazing facility which may well provide a blueprint for future manufacturing practice in this industry. What makes it unique, as far as this industry is concerned, is the level of automation applied to the production processes.
Working on instructions from the production operators, delivered via a sophisticated computer system and based around barcodes, three robots locate product parts at 42,000 shelf locations in the 12-metre high warehouse. These are then put into plastic boxes and transported along the 2,000m-long conveyor belt, which snakes through the facility, to the relevant operator. Once the operator has finished, the unit being assembled travels to the next operator (or is held in a queue if the next operator is not ready) and then once completed is transported by the conveyor belt to the test department before being prepared for despatch.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the robot area, apart from the fact it looks like a scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, is the level of efficiency built into the system. For instance, at night-time, when the factory is quiet, the robots spend their time bringing to the front all the parts boxes for the following day’s production, thus speeding up delivery times.
The benefits of all this can be seen in the production run-rates. For instance, if production is focused o
