Time to get ready for Detroit upturn

The Detroit automotive scene may well be an attractive prospect for European system integrators as traditional US suppliers contract in the face of falling orders, writes Mike Page.

The Detroit automotive scene may well look to be an attractive prospect for European manufacturing system integrators as traditional US suppliers contract in the face of falling orders.

At the Sindelfingen plant of DaimlerChrysler late last year, chairman and chief executive officer of TMS Produktionssysteme, Austria, Gerhard Schupp said that he expected to see difficulties and even insolvency among Detroit's traditional suppliers of body-in-white (BIW) welding and fabrication systems as well as vehicle assembly lines.

Schupp said that orders normally placed for such systems by the 'Big Three' automotive manufacturers in Detroit amount to some US$2.5bn/year.

Orders placed during 2001 had fallen to US$1.2bn and may have risen to US$1.6bn in 2002.

"It is going to be two to three years before orders reach US$2.5bn again," said Schupp.

Consequently, TMS < www.tms-at.com >is focussing on the Detroit market as a means to more than double overseas orders for its robotic systems.

TMS is now better placed to take advantage of changing overseas markets since it was absorbed into the French US$3.1bn Genierie des Technologies de'l Information et des Energies (GTIE) group in late 2001.

So TMS now has access to considerable resources for funding sorties into the US market.

TMS was hardly known in the US.

Its more traditional market is mainland Europe, where it has supplied robotic systems and/or final assembly lines to Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, BMW, Ford, General Motors, PSA, Nissan, Renault, Toyota and DaimlerChrysler.

Now TMS is seeking alliances and acquisitions among North American systems integrators, to be ready when the market picks up again.

The occasion in Sindelfingen was to show those interested recently commissioned TMS systems for the production of the Mercedes Benz E-Class car underbody.

Some of the systems, with the aid of the latest Tecnomatix simulation techniques at the planning stage, had been tightly squeezed into an upper floor location above existing BIW lines.

Using simulation, TMS had been able to produce a much more compact layout of German Kuka < www.kuka-roboter.de > handling, MIG and spot welding robots.

As well as layout and workflow planning, much of the off-line programming had been carried out at the simulation stage < www.tecnomatix.com >, so considerably reducing commissioning time, said TMS.

In 2002, TMS had won its first US contract to supply handling systems to DaimlerChrysler's Tuscaloosa, Alabama, plant for the final assembly of the M-class vehicle.

Other overseas orders won during 2002 came from VW for a BIW system at Delta Motors, South Africa.

Order intake, said Schupp, amounted to US$240m in 2001, compared with US$190m in 2000.

"Our target for 2002 is US$300m, and I would like to see US$500m by 2005.".

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